Elena's Revenge
by a-delacroix
Summary: Klaus has destroyed her family, taken away Stefan, simply wrecked her life. Elena will have her revenge even if it takes recruiting a giant T. Rex for the dirty work. Spoilers through Vampire Diaries S2 Ep. 22 and Primeval S4 Ep. 1. Note: The story is told from Elena's perspective. Being familiar with the British series, Primeval, will enhance things, but is not really necessary.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: The usual disclaimer – these characters are all owned by someone else and have just been borrowed to keep everyone entertained and enthused for the shows over the long, slow summer hiatus until they give us some new episodes!

**Elena's Revenge**

**Prologue**

Who says the original hybrid can't be killed? Oh, I knew it would be difficult, everyone said so. Bonnie, Stefan, Damon, Katherine, and Elijah all had stated at one time or another that it was impossible and most of them had tried at least once to kill Klaus without any success. But perhaps they just didn't have the same motivation I did.

He compelled my biological mother, the vampire Isobel, to expose herself to sunlight while all I could do was helplessly watch in horror as she was consumed by the sickening internal fire. We had never been close and I had only known I was adopted and of her existence for a few months. But I was just starting to realize, as we stood out in the cemetery, that she really did care for me in her own way and we might someday find a way to have some sort of a relationship when Klaus' actions ripped away any possibility of that future.

Then he turned my aunt Jenna into a vampire and killed her before my eyes as part of some stupid ritual to make an already invincible creature even more powerful. And ever since my adoptive parents had been killed in a car accident two years earlier, Jenna had been the closest thing to a parent in my life. Like everyone else we had had our ups and downs, but, I think more ups than downs. And after I had been drawn into the world of vampires, werewolves, and witches, I had tried so hard to protect her and allow her to have a normal life. But as time has gone by, I sometimes wonder if it had been the right decision. Perhaps if I had been honest with her from the beginning, she would have been better prepared and might not have fallen to Klaus' subterfuge. But whether I should have told her or not, I wasn't responsible for killing her - that was all his doing.

And ultimately, Klaus' actions led to the death of my biological father, John, too. For if Klaus hadn't killed me, John wouldn't have sacrificed his life to power a magical spell to bring me back. Unlike my mother, Isobel, I had known John my entire life, although I had thought he was just my uncle until the revelation of my adoption. While we had seen each other countless times down through the years, we had never been close. And since his attempt to kill Stefan and Damon, my attitude towards him had shifted from an almost neutral distaste to an active hatred. I think if I had had more time I might have eventually reconciled with Isobel, but I'm not sure about John. So I was probably more surprised than anyone when he willingly sacrificed his life to save mine.

And in some ways I'm not even sure his sacrifice was necessary. I had Damon's blood in my system when Klaus killed me, so I wouldn't have stayed dead, but merely come back as a vampire instead of as a human. When Damon had forced his blood on me, I had been so angry with him for taking away my choices - for Klaus had promised if I sacrificed myself willingly, he would spare my family and friends. But when Klaus reneged on his promise and killed Jenna, I found myself almost glad for what Damon had done. For I think something . . . broke . . . inside of me with Jenna's death following so soon after Isobel's.

But perhaps the absolute hardest, last straw for me was how Klaus managed to steal Stefan from me. My family, my whole life was in ruins and the only thing that could have taken away some of the pain and hurt was Stefan, my Stefan. I understood why Stefan had gone to Klaus and had been willing to agree to any terms to save Damon, but the price Klaus asked for a mere dribble of his blood was much too much. Stefan was lost to me and I had no idea when, or even if I would ever see him again.

I had never been a vengeful person, but suddenly I needed to exact a horrible revenge on Klaus. It might take decades or centuries to accomplish and so if the ritual ended up with me being a vampire, it would have at least given me the time I might need.

So I was utterly and profoundly shocked when I came back to life human rather than vampire. But in the end, perhaps it was being human that gave me the drive to keep going. I mean, Klaus had destroyed Katherine's whole family, too, but she had only broken and run and spent five hundred years hiding from him rather than revenging her family. So while vampires are physically stronger and have the sometimes convenient option of turning off their emotions, perhaps the transformation removes some necessary bit of drive towards vengeance only a human can sustain. Or perhaps in the immortal words of Damon Salvatore, it simply wasn't the old meek, mild Elena who was resurrected from death but a new changed über-Elena.

For even as Klaus was draining my life's blood as part of the ritual to release the werewolf side of himself; I was already plotting how to finish him. Oh, he might not be able to die, but if I cut him into little pieces with my Dad's trusty old chainsaw and then encased each piece in a separate block of concrete and scattered them to the four corners of the globe, he would be as good as dead.

Of course, killing him by myself with a simple chainsaw was a childish fantasy. I knew if I was to succeed it would take a multilayered plan to attack him from many sides at once. And I would need powerful allies from outside of his world of vampires, werewolves, and witches. So in the end I wasn't able to destroy him with my own hands, but seeing him trapped in the Cretaceous Period at the center of a large, ravenous pack of velociraptors and then finally watching as he was dismembered and eaten by a pair of T-Rexes was almost as satisfying. But I get ahead of myself . . .

**Chapter 1**

**Part 1  
**

"Come on, Elena, snap out of it," said Bonnie, as she, Caroline, and I walked down the front steps of Mystic High. "It's been two weeks. Moping around isn't going to bring Stefan back. And Jenna wouldn't want you to spend the rest of your life mourning her. You've done nothing but go straight home from school and sit in your room; it's time to get out. Let's head out to the Grill and get something to eat. I think Matt will be working. Maybe seeing and talking to him will cheer you up."

I didn't think seeing Matt was going to do anything to cheer me up. Only finding a lead to where Stefan and Klaus had gone and developing a plan for getting Stefan away from Klaus was going to cheer me up. And I wasn't yet ready to explain to Bonnie, my absolute best friend in the world, that I wasn't going home to stare blankly at the wall. No, I was spending hour after hour, evening after evening, searching the internet to find some solution to the situation with Stefan and Klaus.

But at Bonnie's remark, I forced my thoughts briefly to Matt. It seemed like a lifetime ago when he and I had dated. We had sort of broken up at the death of my parents, my adoptive parents, who I had thought had been my real parents until well after their deaths. Well, to be honest, they were still the ones who I thought of as my _real_ parents.

I had said I needed some time apart and how I needed to focus my attention on Jeremy, who was taking the death of our parents even harder than me. Matt had respected my wishes and given me the space I needed. I truly think in my heart I had already moved on from Matt before Stefan even came into the picture, but I don't think Matt saw things that way. It took him a long, long time to accept I was with Stefan and for him to move on and hook up with Caroline.

As we moved towards the school's parking lot, I looked over at my other best friend and took in the expression on the tall blonde's face. She didn't look any happier at the thought of talking to Matt at the moment than me. Learning about the existence of werewolves and vampires had freaked out staid, conservative Matt. And finding out Caroline was a vampire had nearly torn their relatively new, fragile relationship apart. I knew she had been giving him some time and space to adjust and I didn't think she was excited about dealing with the whole situation today.

But glancing back at Bonnie, I understood her feelings; she had to do something to break the status quo and get us out of the rut into which we had fallen.

"It's Friday," I began. "We don't have to be back for school until Monday. How about instead of going to the Grill, we do a girls' weekend at the lake house instead? Let's just get in the car and go. We can call to let people know where we will be. And we can stop somewhere along the way to pick up food and supplies."

I saw Bonnie's eyes light up at the suggestion. Then turning in Caroline's direction, I saw her give a vigorous nod in agreement.

"I think a couple of days away from Mystic Falls is a wonderful idea," stated Caroline. "Since my Mother and I had our little heart-to-heart about my being a V and all, she has been way too touchy-feely to show that she is okay with things. A couple of days away from her would be great."

"Great," I echoed, as we reached the spot where Stefan's little red Porsche was parked. "Pile in and let's go."

"I call shotgun," exclaimed Bonnie, as she scurried around to the passenger side door.

"You're driving Stefan's car?" remarked Caroline while eying its tiny, tiny backseat.

I shrugged. "Damon said it wasn't good for it to just sit in the garage for weeks or months." At the word _months_ a catch formed in my throat, but I forced myself to continue. "And after everything you've been through in the last few months, being squished sideways into the back seat for a couple of hours shouldn't be that big of a deal."

Caroline stared at me with her big blue eyes and for just an instant I was glad I was wearing my special necklace filled with vervain. But then the moment passed and Caroline pulled open the driver side door, tilted the seat forward, tossed her book bag in ahead of her, and crawled into the back seat with more grace than I thought was possible while wearing an extremely short, tight skirt. But then she was a vampire and when they weren't trying to pass for human they could move with a grace and elegance no human could possibly achieve.

I reached down into the foot well and popped the lever which would open the front trunk. For a moment I felt a small trill of panic as I hadn't checked it for contents before leaving the Salvatore estate and I knew it had, on numerous occasions, contained things that shouldn't be seen in a busy school parking lot. But as the hood lifted up, I was relieved to find it didn't contain anything but the usual automotive accessories like a spare, a jack, and a small toolbox. Quickly, I tossed Bonnie's and my book bags in and then slammed the lid.

I climbed in behind the wheel and then spent a moment searching for the ignition. I hadn't driven it often yet and was looking for a spot for the key to the right of the steering wheel like on any more normal car. But after only a little fumbling I had the car started and its small engine purred quietly to life. Finding reverse was always a bitch, but I managed to back out of the parking spot without stalling it. Then riding the clutch in a way I knew would make Stefan frown, I followed the slow moving stream of cars until we were out on the street. Reaching the end of the block, instead of going straight towards home or turning left for the Grill, I turned right and headed towards the main road.

The first time I had driven the old Porsche with Stefan sitting almost anxiously in the passenger seat, I had learned it was all about style not performance. Jenna's Mini could run circles around it. And the convoluted cables leading from the shifter to the transmission responded best to a slow deft touch rather than to a fast bang, bang, bang shifting style like the Mini. So as we headed towards the main road I grabbed my sunglasses from where I had hung them over the rearview mirror and tried to imagine myself as some Hollywood starlet from the '50s or '60s on her way to her secret weekend hideaway in the mountains around Big Bear.

At least Stefan wasn't fanatical about keeping his car stock and had replaced the original radio with something contemporary. I had synced my iPhone to its Bluetooth before leaving for school. Now I fished my phone from my pocket and handed it to Bonnie suggesting she pick some tunes. We had just reached the edge of town when she had finished selecting her playlist. The stereo started blasting and we all sang along at the top of our lungs; the burst of frenetic singing starting to ease the tensions of the last few weeks and months.

**Part 2**

We stopped in the small town of Moscow, about twenty minutes from the lake house, for dinner and to pick up some supplies. We weren't in any hurry and it was almost dark when we got back onto the road.

The next ten miles were still on the easy main highway. Then we would have to switch to a smaller country road for five miles before the final mile on the old gravel road. I hadn't been out there since before all the spring rains, so I hoped the gravel road would be passable with the low-slung Porsche. For just a moment, I wished I had swapped cars with Alaric before leaving, as his big Tahoe could get through without question. But if it came to it, we would just leave the car at the end of the lane and hoof it. It was only a mile and none of us were that out of shape.

But I needn't have worried about the old gravel lane; we never made it that far. We were barely three miles out of Moscow and I was tooling along at a sedate sixty miles an hour, really I was, when something massive suddenly appeared in the road barely seventy feet in front of us. I had no idea what it was at the time. It barely registered as some giant spinning golden crystalline structure lit by an inner glow before I slammed the clutch and the brake pedals to the floor. The Porsche's brakes, while powerful for such a small car, were as arcane as the rest of its systems and would never be mistaken for their modern anti-lock counterparts. Nor were the lap belts nearly as effective as modern shoulder harnesses. I, at least, had the steering wheel to hold onto while we slammed into an almost uncontrolled skid. Bonnie wasn't as fortunate. Her body was thrown forward and her head lightly connected with the hard unpadded dash. At least I hoped it was lightly as I fought to control the car. I knew we didn't have a chance in hell of stopping before we struck the obstacle suddenly filling the whole width of the road.

We were still traveling at twenty miles an hour when we struck it or should have struck it. I had braced myself against the steering wheel and had resigned myself to being impaled on one of the countless sharp hard-looking spines protruding from its core when we impacted. However there was no impact. The object, whatever it was, wasn't solid at all but some kind of hologram like you see in the movies. It looked perfectly solid and real, but the Porsche passed through it without the slightest shudder, or at least without any shudder beyond what we were already experiencing due to the locked brakes.

But while the car passed through without any reaction, it wasn't the same for me. No, for a second that seemed to stretch almost to infinity, it felt like I was floating outside time and space. The car, the steering wheel, Bonnie, simply everything around me was gone and I was floating in a bright white mist. I had time to just start contemplating how this was such a bizarre, unexpected way to lose my life after all the dangers I had survived in my dealings with vampires and werewolves when abruptly we were through the structure and out the other side.

However in the instant we passed through the rotating crystalline structure everything had changed. We were no longer on the road; the road was nowhere in sight. We were skidding across a sloping grassy meadow. And it was suddenly broad daylight rather than dark. And the trees surrounding the glade looked almost alien and not at all like the pine trees that I knew lined the road all the way out to the lake house. I had no idea where we were but it was nowhere near where we had just been.

The car finally slid to a stop after traveling another forty feet and missing a giant tree by mere inches. I sagged forward against the steering wheel for a minute before remembering Bonnie and her collision with the dash.

"Bonnie, are you okay?" I asked, as she slowly straightened up while rubbing at her forehead.

"I think so, what happened?" she asked in a slightly dazed tone.

"Look at me," I said in almost a commanding voice. "I need to check your eyes."

She turned in my direction and I could see an ugly knot already forming in the center of her forehead. At least her pupils appeared to be the same size, which seemed to be a good sign based on all the TV shows I had seen down through the years.

"Are you okay?" I asked again in a calmer tone.

She nodded with only a small wince before we were interrupted by a call from the back seat.

"Hey, why aren't you worried about me? I'm the one who wasn't wearing a seatbelt and was thrown around."

"Well, Caroline," I began with a trace of humor before my eyes were drawn to the impossible scene outside the car. "You are the vampire. Being tossed around a little shouldn't hurt you."

"Where are we?" asked Bonnie finally getting beyond the shock of the accident and turning to gaze out of her window.

"I have no idea," I replied while switching off the idling engine and opening the door. "And we aren't going to figure it out just sitting here."

I climbed out of the car and it was suddenly like being hit in the face with an extremely hot, damp towel. We sometimes got humid weather in the summer in Mystic Falls, but nothing like this. When I had been twelve and Jeremy eleven, our family had gone to Hawaii on vacation. Stepping off the plane into the hot tropical air had been just like this. The humidity had to be at least ninety-eight percent. Instantly, I could feel my tee shirt starting to stick to my skin.

Bonnie had just climbed out of her side of the car and Caroline was still struggling to get the front seat tilted forward when the first tremor reached us. Caroline had one leg out of the car when the second tremor reached us and I saw a large flutter in the trees on the far side of the glade directly beyond the shimmering gold structure we had somehow passed through. Caroline was just straightening up when what had to be a giant T-Rex stepped out into the clearing, its passage knocking down several small trees.

I'm not sure which of us screamed the loudest before we all clapped hands over our mouths when the mammoth creature's head swung in our direction. Instantly, it came charging towards us.

We stood frozen in place by the incongruity of the situation, even the impossibly fast vampire. I'm not sure if we would have even reacted before the massive dinosaur reached us, but it never did. The gold spinning structure was directly in its path and when it tried to charge straight through it the T-Rex simply vanished and the structure continued to spin looking completely unperturbed.

We just stared wildly around as it sank in that the crystalline device had to be some kind of portal through time. And we were trapped back in the time of dinosaurs. I was wondering if we passed through it a second time, if it would take us back home. Of course, the giant dinosaur might be waiting on the other side, which wasn't an appealing idea.

Then the question of a second passage through the structure became moot, as it slowly began to fade away. In less than ten seconds, certainly in less time than any of us except Caroline could have cross the intervening distance, it was gone.

Our route home had just disappeared.

Then the tremors began again from what had to be another giant dinosaur.

We were so screwed.

End of Chapter 1

Author's Note: I've only seen one other cross-over story for Vampire Diaries and Primeval. And it was both short and more focused on the romance side. To me, vampires and dinosaurs just beg for some big action sequences. If you like that sort of thing, too, I think you will enjoy this story, as I'm not constrained by a TV show's budget, but just whatever I can imagine and get down on paper. Also, if you have read any of my other stories, you will know I like to write time-travel stories and I think this story will have some unexpected twists and turns that will weave the plotlines of the two shows together in a fun way.

As you can tell from the first chapter, the Vampire Diaries portion of the story starts right at the end of season two. The Primeval part of the story starts right at the beginning of season four. This point in both shows struck me as an interesting point to smash them together. I also like this spot because if you don't follow either show, but have a streaming Netflix account, the first two seasons of Vampire Diaries and the first four seasons of Primeval are available there to catch up. Although you really don't need to be familiar with either show to enjoy this story, as I will provide all the background you will need to understand what is going on. But I do try to provide little Easter Eggs for people who actively follow them.

I already have quite a few chapters of this story written, so I am going to try to post new chapters on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Hopefully, I will get the rest of the story finished before I run out of chapters, but at a minimum I should be good until at least somewhere out in July. Hopefully, this will fill a little bit of the long drought until we get new episodes of Vampire Diaries in September.

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out my blog at: duaneaakre dot wordpress dot com

Have a great day,

Duane

P.S. Reviews are always appreciated since that's the only payment I get for writing this story!


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

"We need to grab our things and get into cover under the trees," said Caroline urgently, yet quietly.

I don't know why she was the first one able to break the paralysis that seemed to grip us from the moment the first giant dinosaur had entered the glade. Perhaps it was the predatory nature of her vampire state coming face-to-face with an even greater predator. Regardless, her words got Bonnie and me moving.

Caroline turned with vampiric speed, reached back into the car, and pulled the lever which popped the front trunk. Then in one smooth motion she grabbed her purse and book bag from the back seat and slung them over one shoulder before moving around the door to the front trunk. She lofted our bags in our two directions before leaning further into the trunk. By the time I had caught my bag, slung it from my shoulder, and moved closer, she was handing me one of the plastic grocery bags of supplies we had bought back in Moscow and then the tire iron. Next stretching across the hood of the car in Bonnie's direction, she passed across the other bag of food and the small tool box. Finally, she pulled out the jack and gave it an experimental swing. It looked like the tire iron and the jack were going to be our biggest weapons and neither of them looked like they would put the slightest dent in a charging T. Rex. Briefly I wished, for the second time in a matter of minutes, that I had brought Alaric's car instead of Stefan's, as Alaric's car was always fully stocked with weapons, although none of them might have been of any use against a giant dinosaur.

"Why are we taking the book bags?" whispered Bonnie as she straightened from retrieving her purse from the passenger foot well. "They are just going to slow us down."

"I have no idea what we will use them for, maybe just toilet paper, but it looks like we are a long way from home and these may be our only supplies."

I shuddered at the thought of tearing pages from my history book to use as toilet paper. That's why I liked going to the lake house rather than camping, as the house had ALL the modern conveniences.

Caroline quickly ushered us around the front of the car, passed the large tree we had just missed with our abrupt arrival, and then further back into the hot, humid, foreboding landscape beyond. We had reached the second row of trees when the second T. Rex cleared the trees on the opposite side of the meadow. I don't know if it was missing its mate or if spotting the Porsche was the trigger, but it let out an incredible bellow before charging across the clearing. We had been trying to move quietly, but now we broke into a run to get further back into the forest.

After a couple minutes of running, we ducked down into the shelter of a tree with a massive aerial root system like the Banyan tree I had seen at Thomas Edison's winter home in Fort Myers when we had been to Florida on vacation one time. This felt like the safest spot we had seen, as the T. Rex would have to break through a series of four to five foot diameter trunks to reach our position near the master central trunk.

Running in the extremely humid air while weighed down with the supplies and the book bags had been surprisingly hard work. We had only gone several hundred yards, certainly not more than a quarter mile, but I was working hard to catch my breath. I was getting ready to make some remark when we all heard the shriek of ripping metal. The T. Rex had reached and was now attacking the Porsche. It was a good thing we hadn't tried to take shelter in the car.

For a moment I couldn't suppress a gallows humor giggle. Stefan was going to be so pissed when he found out his precious car had been destroyed by an irate dinosaur!

"What do we do now?" I asked, as I watched Caroline use her vampire strength to tear at the seams along the left and right sides of her short skirt. That article of clothing had never been designed for running and it looked like a lot of running might lie in our immediate future. Then I glanced at her now bare feet. Somewhere between the Porsche and here she had abandoned her four inch stiletto heels. Looking over at Bonnie with her only slightly more practical dress with its less restrictive pleated skirt, I was suddenly glad I was in my usual school attire of black skinny jeans and Converse high tops.

"Shit," whispered Bonnie. When Caroline and I looked in her direction, she gestured up, moving little more than her eyes. "Velociraptors."

I followed the direction of her gaze to the cross-members of the tree that tied the daughter trunks to the master trunk perhaps twenty-five feet above our heads. I quickly spotted what I at first mistook to be a large bird since it was covered with yellow and brown mottled feathers. Then when it shifted slightly I saw the long reptilian tail and realized what I had at first taken to be wings were actually feather covered legs. It looked to weigh about twenty-five pounds and stretched maybe six feet from the tip of its snout to the end of its tail. It didn't look at all like the velociraptors in the movie, _Jurassic Park_, which had looked like your typical seven foot tall dinosaur.

"Velociraptors? Really?" I asked, also at a whisper.

"Yeah, we studied them in my AP biology class. The movie got it all wrong or they just liked the name and used it for a different dinosaur. These are more like prototypes for the great hunting birds like eagles and owls. They like to attack from above. They can't really fly; their motion is more like a controlled glide. The experts are undecided whether they hunt in packs."

"They definitely hunt in packs. I count twenty-five of them," whispered the vampire, who had keener senses than us mere humans. "Bonnie, you better have some witchy mojo ready."

Caroline had slipped off her book bag and purse and now rose to a crouch with the jack clutched firmly in her right hand. I followed suit - getting rid of the things I was carrying and taking a better grip of the tire iron.

With a hiss and then a screech, one of the velociraptors to our left launched itself down towards us. Caroline waited until it was almost upon us before standing up and swinging the jack in a fast, hard arc that was almost impossible to see. It connected solidly with the giant lizard sending it flying thirty feet before it hit a tree trunk with an audible crunch of bones.

But before it even hit the tree, four more had launched themselves. All I could do was focus on the one headed most directly in my direction, as I rose to my feet and shifted to a two handed grip on the tire iron. The lizard flapped its front legs a couple of times in a motion not unlike that of an ordinary bird, but mostly it just fell towards me.

I should have been frozen with fear, but surprisingly I felt calm as I waited for the right moment to strike. Then when it came I swung the iron with all my strength. I caught the lizard on its left side just behind the forward leg. It didn't go flying off like the first one Caroline hit, but I heard bones breaking as it passed over my head before thudding to the ground behind me. For some reason I thought about how it probably had light bones like a bird, as I turned and spotted the next one barely ten feet above me.

I knocked down three and Caroline must have stopped at least eight or nine when Bonnie suddenly rose to her feet and called out in what sounded like Latin.

"DAEMONUM ABIIT!" Then she did a thrusting away gesture with her hands.

Abruptly, all the velociraptors in mid-air and those still in the branches above us burst into flames. Then it was like a hurricane force wind came rushing out of Bonnie's hands. The velociraptors went whipping away, then all the branches on the trees immediately in front of us ripped away and followed after the lizards, and finally the nearest twenty trees in front of us, some of them massive two hundred foot tall monsters, all ripped out of the ground and went hurdling away. In less than five seconds a new one hundred seventy foot long clearing stretched out in front of us.

"Holy shit, Bonnie," exclaimed Caroline, as she stared out at the devastation.

Bonnie didn't respond to Caroline's remark other than to raise her hands again.

"FORMARE DEFENSIVA CONVEXO!"

Abruptly, a thirty foot hemispherical shimmering blue dome formed around us stretching from high over our heads all the way down to the ground.

I stared at Bonnie as she reached up and wiped at her nose. Usually, when she used a large amount of magic, and this had been a massive display, her nose would start bleeding. But her finger came away clean and dry.

"Wow," she exclaimed. "It's like the whole world's supply of magic is available at my fingertips."

"If we are really back in the time of the dinosaurs, maybe you are the first witch to ever draw on the Earth's magic," I hypothesized.

But before she had a chance to reply, I heard a hissing from behind me. One of the velociraptors I had hit was struggling back to its feet and I could see the others I had clubbed were also down, but not out.

I had just raised the tire iron when Caroline came racing over. She quickly snapped the necks of the first two. Then, as I watched, I saw her eyes turn fully red, the black veins appear around her eyes, and her fangs extend. She grabbed the final velociraptor and sank her teeth into its neck. She drank for nearly twenty seconds before dropping the lifeless corpse to the ground. Then she wiped at her blood covered chin with the back of her hand.

When she saw me watching, she threw a quick wink and added, "Tastes like chicken."

Suddenly the incredulity of our situation struck home and I started to laugh, although I think it contained more than a hint of hysteria. We were stranded millions of years back in time with no way home and in mere minutes here we had been attacked by both a T. Rex and a pack of velociraptors. If we didn't find a way out of here fast, our life expectancy could probably be measured in hours.

"Bonnie, can you look and see if the tool box contains a knife?" I said in her direction when I finally got my laughter under control. "These velociraptors are probably going to have to be our next meal."

She was just squatting down to look in the box when a male voice with a distinctive British accent called out from our right.

"I say, the little red Porsche the Giganotosaurus is playing with wouldn't happen to belong to you three young women, would it?"

Caroline, Bonnie, and I turned and stared at an extremely scruffy looking man and woman in their mid-twenties standing just beyond the protective barrier.

**End of Chapter 2**

Author's Note: If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out my blog at duaneaakre wordpress com

Have a great day!

Duane


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Bonnie dropped her protective barrier just long enough for the pair to step through before raising it again. The man gave the shimmering blue surface a speculative stare before turning in our direction.

"What year are you from? When I saw the Porsche, I thought it must have been the 1950's or 1960's. But now I am guessing somewhere in the distant future, if you have personal force field generators and whatever weapon it is you used to cause all the devastation over there."

The preceding was said with a single breath with hardly a pause between any of the words. From the words and the look in his eyes I simply _knew_ he was some kind of geek.

"Connor, calm down," said the woman towards the man in a matching British accent before turning her attention towards us. "Sorry about that. Connor tends to run off at the mouth when he is excited and this is the first chance he has had to talk to anyone besides me in almost a year. Oh, by the way, I'm Abby Maitland and this is Connor Temple."

"Almost a year?" I repeated after giving our names in turn. "Does that mean you're trapped here like us?"

When this Abby, a blonde with hair that fell just short of her shoulders and was all done up in weird little braids, nodded, I could barely believe it. Just moments earlier, I couldn't imagine how we could survive more than a few hours here, and even those few hours would only be possible because of Caroline's speed and strength and Bonnie's magical gifts. Now it sounded like this pair had been here almost a year. It was hard to believe, although it did explain their extremely scruffy appearance, and I would never say this out loud, but also their exceedingly ripe smell. But then I wondered if we would hold up that well after a year with only the handful of supplies we had brought with us.

"Yeah," replied Connor expanding on the woman's mere nod of the head. "The anomaly we came through closed shortly after we arrived. We have been waiting ever since for its return or a sign of another one. My makeshift detector picked up the one you came through, but it must have been one of an unusually short duration, as it was already closed again when we got here. If we hadn't seen the car and then heard all the noise you were making, we never would have guessed someone else had come through."

Again the man somehow seemed to manage to say all that in a single breath and together with his thick accent, some of it had been almost hard to follow.

"Anomalies?" I asked while gesturing towards the spot where we had been sitting before all the excitement with the velociraptors had occurred.

The woman, Abby, moved to join us, but Connor seemed to be frozen in place. When I followed his line of sight, I could see his gaze was fixed on Caroline. When I took in her appearance, I wasn't certain what it was about her that held his attention. It could have been the blood still coating the lower half of her face. But if he had been trapped here for a year with the woman as his only companion, I could just as easily believe it was the way Caroline's short, short skirt was only being held in place by a narrow strip of material around her waist. It left such a large swath of skin exposed at her hip as to reveal she had to be wearing an extremely skimpy pair of thong panties, if she was wearing any underwear at all. I mean, Caroline had always been the wildest of us three and her turning had seemed to crank that side of her personality up several notches.

Then my gaze drifted over to Bonnie and how the humidity had plastered her blouse to her skin in an almost erotic manner. This caused me to glance down at myself and I saw how my damp white tee and sheer pink bra were completely transparent - like I was participating in the Saturday night wet tee shirt contest at Bobbie-Ray's over in Timberlake. Not that I have ever competed over there. Well, there was that one time, back before Caroline became a vamp, that we went over there on a dare, but perhaps that is a story for another time.

Anyway, for Connor it must have been like being trapped on some mythical desert isle - just him and four extremely hot girls. Well, a dreamy desert isle except for the whole 'high probability of being eaten by a dinosaur' drawback. And it certainly explained Connor's distraction.

Suddenly my own near reverie was broken when Abby responded to my question, which I had nearly forgotten.

"The anomalies are portals through time, as I'm sure you have guessed by now. In the last few of years numerous anomalies from time periods scattered across millions of years have been opening all over England. And since mankind has only been around for a few thousand years, many of these anomalies open to times where other predators were at the top of the food chain. And many of these predators have passed through these portals into the present.

"We are part of an organization set up by the government to secretly protect the public by trapping and returning any creatures coming through the anomalies. We have learned how to seal the anomalies, but we haven't been too successful at predicting when and where anomalies will occur or how long they will last. We were on a mission back here when we got delayed and our anomaly closed before we could get back to it."

Just then Bonnie reached into one of the grocery bags and pulled out a handful of KitKats.

"We might as well eat these. In this heat they are going to get mushy and probably spoil real fast." Bonnie has always had a bit of a sweet tooth and I sometimes wonder how she manages to stay so thin.

"You . . . you . . . you have chocolate?" asked Abby with a stutter in her voice and a feral gleam in her eyes like a vampire that has gone weeks without feeding.

As she almost grabbed a bar out of Bonnie's hand, Connor drifted over, too. "I say, you wouldn't also have a nice fat juicy beefsteak and some chips in that bag? I have been dreaming about that for so long, I almost can't remember what the real thing tastes like. We have been getting by on roots, berries, and the occasional fish for way, way too long."

Bonnie shook her head while extending one of the candy bars in his direction, which he snatched away greedily. He had his package almost open and Abby's bar was half gone before he added a small 'Thank You'. But then a year of living in dinosaur country had probably stripped away unnecessary things like polite manners.

While subconsciously pulling the front of the damp tee away from my skin to hide my effectively naked breasts, I echoed one of Connor's original questions, "So what year are you from? I have never heard of these anomaly things, so it must be you who are from our future."

"2009," replied Abby, as she paused from licking the last traces of chocolate from her fingers. She gave a lingering glance towards the remaining small stack of KitKats by Bonnie before turning more fully in my direction. "How about you? And you're American, right?"

"2011," I said and then continued with a nod. "Yeah, we're American. We are from Mystic Falls, Virginia. We were on our way out to my family's lake house for the weekend. Well, actually, now that my parents and legal guardian are all dead, technically I suppose, it is my lake house. Anyway, this crystalline spinning object, the anomaly, suddenly appeared in the road right in front of us. It was way too close and we passed through it before I could get the car stopped."

Having finished his own candy bar, Connor pulled out a canteen, made from some kind of gourd and hanging from a loop of rope around his neck, and took a swig. Then turning in my direction, he rejoined the conversation, although his eyes were fixed on where my hands were still fiddling with the front of my tee rather than on my face.

"You can't be from 2011. They couldn't have developed a force field generator and whatever weapon you unleashed on the forest in only two years. And even if they had, they certainly wouldn't hand them out to girls who must still be in sixth form, if that."

I had no idea what he meant by 'sixth form'. It sounded vaguely like some term from the Harry Potter books I had read as a kid. And Connor was British and all.

But the big question was how to reply to his question about how Bonnie had done the things she had done. Back home, we had always tried to limit how many people knew about witches, vampires, and werewolves. Humans knowing about mythical beings always seemed to lead to trouble. I mean, look at all the problems the Founder's Council has caused in their futile attempts to protect the town from vampires. If they would have just left it to people like Stefan, Damon, and Ric, a lot more people would still be alive.

So I was hesitant to tell these virtual strangers the truth, but couldn't figure out any convincing story to tell when Caroline took the matter out of my hands.

She had been standing somewhat apart from the rest of us, but now she moved closer and squatted down in front of Abby and Connor. She opened her mouth so her upper teeth were visible and then she caused her fangs to extend and the dark veins to appear around her eyes. I had seen it several times before, but with the reptile blood still covering the lower half of her face, even I found myself drawing back slightly. Connor's eyes had flicked towards her nearly exposed crotch when she had first knelt down, but now his eyes were fixed on her face as he started scrambling backwards until he was hard up against the massive tree trunk. Abby held her position, but a homemade knife suddenly appeared in her hand with almost vampiric speed. Suddenly, I realized she was the true warrior of this pair and doubtlessly it was her actions that had kept them alive in this scarily dangerous place.

For a second I thought Caroline was going to use her powers to compel Connor and Abby, but in the end she just retracted her fangs and reverted to her more normal appearance.

"I'm a vampire," she stated simply. "And Bonnie is a very, very powerful witch. If we are going to get out of here and make it back home, it is going to be because of her."

Then Caroline turned in Bonnie's direction. "Bonnie, can you use your gifts to locate one of these anomaly things or, better yet, can you make one appear?"

As soon as she said the words, I knew Caroline was right. If we were going to escape, it was going to be up to Bonnie.

Almost as one, we all turned and stared at the young, beautiful witch.

**End of Chapter 3**

Author's Note: If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out my blog at duaneaakre wordpress com

Have a great day!

Duane


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

**Part 1**

Bonnie returned our stare for a minute before turning to gaze out at the devastation she had wrought while dealing with the velociraptors. Finally, she turned back in our direction.

"I wish I had my Grimoire. I am pretty sure I saw a spell for opening a passageway through time, but I don't remember any of the details."

I, too, had been looking at the giant bare patch of torn up soil. A few small reptiles and even one large dinosaur, which thankfully looked like a herbivore, had started to investigate the newly opened space. And fortunately, we hadn't seen hide nor hair of the T. Rex, or Giganotosaurus as Connor had called it, since it had eaten Stefan's Porsche. Still, our luck, if being stranded in the dinosaur era could in any way involve luck, wouldn't hold forever and we needed to get out of here sooner rather than later.

"Bonnie, you seem to have access to nearly unlimited magic here. Certainly there must be something you can try."

"You're really a witch like in the old stories? With Grimoires, talisman, and cauldrons?" asked Abby. When Bonnie nodded, Abby continued with a shake of her head. "I never would have believed magic was real. Or if I was ever to learn of it, it would be while I was trapped back here. Suddenly, I'm not sure which is harder to believe, time anomalies or magic."

Bonnie nodded towards Abby again before her eyes slowly swept over the rest of us before settling on Connor. "Well, one thing comes to mind to try without access to my Grimoire. However it requires us to all stand in a tight little group. Naked. You know, like the time bubbles in the Terminator movies."

I couldn't believe Bonnie was serious until I saw the intent expression on her face. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Connor and he was displaying a really stupid grin.

"No, wait, now I remember more of it. I don't know why, but only guys actually have to get naked. Girls can go through it fully clothed," added Bonnie.

I could see the crestfallen expression on Connor's face and how his eyes started to dart around wildly.

"Although," continued Bonnie with a thoughtful tilt of her head, "perhaps the way the spell worked is that guys go naked, but come out fully clothed while the reverse happens with girls. Yeah, it sounds strange, but I'm sure that's how this spell works."

I had known Bonnie all my life and knew her sense of humor. I was by now pretty sure she was just pulling Connor's leg to get even for the way he had been ogling the three of us since the moment he and Abby had shown up. I tried to hold a straight face to see how far Bonnie was going to take this.

I saw Abby throw Bonnie a quick wink with the eye on the side of her face away from Connor before she turned to him with just the slightest hint of a twinkle still in her eyes.

"Come on, Connor. After three hundred forty seven days, I don't want to stay here one second longer than I have to. Strip." Then she added in a commanding tone. "NOW!"

Connor stared wildly around from girl to girl and we just solemnly nodded our heads. Finally, with a muttered, "This is so not fair," he began pulling off the canteen, backpack, and assorted other bits and pieces of equipment that were strapped to his body. Once they were all lying in a heap around his feet, he shot a pleading glance at Abby.

"Hurry up, we don't have all day," was all she said.

Slowly he reached up and lifted off a decrepit old hat, whose clean counterpart seventy million years in the future might grace Frank Sinatra's head in the Rat Pack's glory days. Then he grasped the lower edge of his pullover shirt, which after a year of daily hard use was covered with holes and failed seams, and pulled it off over his head.

As the shirt dropped to the ground, his arms fell to his side. His bare chest was filthy, but a year of hard living had burned away what little body fat he might have once possessed and added a light dusting of muscles. He wasn't anywhere near Stefan's or Damon's league, but he certainly didn't have anything to be embarrassed about in the chest department.

He hesitated for a moment, but at Abby's urging, he started to work on the belt. When it was loose, he undid the button and then grasped the sides of his pants and looked ready to pull them down with one fast jerk.

And that's when Bonnie couldn't restrain herself any longer and doubled over with laughter. And her laughter was contagious. I felt a grin form on my face and then I was laughing, too. In seconds, Abby and Caroline had joined in.

Connor paused with his hands still clasping the sides of his pants, but he had an utterly clueless expression on his face like he didn't have the slightest idea why we were laughing. The tableau held for at least twenty seconds before I recognized from his face when the light bulb went off.

"Ha, ha. Very funny. Let's have a little humor at Connor's expense," he said while rebuttoning his pants and refastening his belt.

He was just reaching for his shirt when Bonnie caught her breath and replied. "It only seemed fair after the way you have been blatantly trying to figure out if Caroline is wearing any panties and leering at Elena's breasts and even at me. But I would be careful if I was you," she said while pausing to point at the destruction to her left. "You can see what I am capable of and that time I wasn't even pissed off. I've seen Caroline drink men dry leaving just a lifeless husk. And Elena's boyfriend is also a vamp and I've seen him kill people for less."

Connor's Adam's apple visibly jumped up and down several times, but it was Caroline who spoke next.

"Bonnie, that's not fair. I haven't killed anyone, or at least not any humans who didn't really deserve it, since I got my gifts under control."

"And," I appended almost without thinking, "I am perfectly capable of looking after myself, thank you very much. Stefan doesn't need to look out for me. If Connor or anyone else steps over the line, I can handle it."

"Geez, guys, chill out," replied Bonnie. "I was just having a little fun. And a minute ago, you seemed to be enjoying it just as much."

For a moment, based on her comment about my breasts, I wondered if Bonnie had been staring at them just as much as Connor. We had played harmless kissing games before, but that was way back in middle school. And she was with my brother, Jeremy, now. Quickly, I forced my thoughts away from dangerous, forbidden topics.

"So, can you get us out of here?" I asked. "I am so ready, to get back home or to the lake house and take a nice long bath." My thoughts were abruptly drawn back to the sleep-over Caroline, Bonnie, and I had shared at Caroline's house when we were fourteen and her Mom, the sheriff, had been called away for an emergency. We had raided the liquor cabinet and gotten sloshed on a bottle of brandy. Then, somehow, while talking about all the boys in school we wanted to do, we had ended up giggling together in the oversized tub in the master bathroom.

I tried to force my thoughts away from that long ago night. We were in a place where we could be eaten by giant dinosaurs at any moment, but I couldn't seem to keep my mind out of the gutter. What was wrong with me? Stefan had only been gone for two weeks; had I really in the last year become so addicted to his hard chiseled body and the response it could elicit from my own that I couldn't go two weeks without suffering from withdrawal?

"Me, too," replied Bonnie with a significant glance into my eyes before she stooped to pick up her book bag and the other items she had been carrying when we had made our hasty departure from the Porsche. I couldn't help but wonder as I picked up my own gear if that look had meant she was also thinking about the night in the tub. Down, Gilbert, she's with my brother, I reminded myself. And someday I'm going to rescue Stefan from Klaus' clutches; I don't need to start fantasizing about making out with my girlfriends.

Remembering my need to revenge Klaus' destruction of my family helped force thoughts of Bonnie and Caroline into the background with all the other naughty daydreams that sometimes swirled around inside me like the new one about helping to clean a year's worth of hard living from Connor and Abby's bodies. Down, Gilbert, down!

When Bonnie saw everyone else was ready, she took several steps away and then turned to face away from us. She raised her arms high and began to chant in what once again sounded like Latin.

"Placere aperire tempus transitus. Placere aperire tempus transitus. Placere aperire tempus transitus. PLACERE APERIRE TEMPUS TRANSITUS!"

Bonnie continued to chant this same phrase for nearly a minute before I first noticed the faint shimmer in the air in front of her. It took another thirty seconds before it coalesced into a spinning structure similar to the one we had passed through in the Porsche.

"You did it, Bonnie," I found myself exclaiming as I stepped up beside her. I could still feel more than a hint of sexual tension, but the prospect of passing through one of these anomalies again was keeping it in check. "Is this going to take us home?"

Bonnie shrugged and glanced in my direction and I couldn't help but notice how her eyes lingered on my still visible nipples for a moment before rising to my face. Even through her light brown skin, I could see a momentary blush spread across her cheeks. "I have no idea. But it will take us somewhere – hopefully somewhere without dinosaurs." After the briefest of pauses she added in a whisper, "And hopefully a tub's worth of hot water."

Then she reached down, picked up the grocery bag and toolbox she had set aside while doing the incantation, and then strode briskly into the anomaly without a backward glance.

I shot one quick glance over my shoulder at the others and then turned to follow my best friend.

**Part 2**

The other side of the anomaly was dark. It had been night when we had passed through the first anomaly, so I took it as a good sign we might be back at our starting point. Of course, the big potential downside was the T. Rex which had passed through the first anomaly and could be lurking somewhere in the area.

Then after taking barely three steps away from the anomaly, I realized I was freezing cold. At first, as I quickly wrapped my arms tightly around my body, I thought it was simply a reaction to suddenly being outside at night in a tee that was nearly dripping wet from the humidity back in the dinosaur epoch on the other side of the anomaly. But then I decided even discounting the effect of the wet tee, it was much colder than it should be in the woods within a two hour drive of Mystic Falls at this time of year. In the faint glow from the anomaly, I could even see my breath when I exhaled.

My teeth were almost chattering when the others, Caroline, Abby, and Connor, stepped through the anomaly behind me. And I had stopped so close to it, Abby couldn't help but bump into me. After a quick apology to me, she drew a slow deep breath.

"Ah, it is great to be away from the Cretaceous, maybe now the constant randy feelings will recede a little."

"Randy?" I repeated through teeth that were now definitely beginning to chatter.

"Sure. You must have felt it, even though you were only there a short while. Seventy five million years ago, the mix of gases in the atmosphere was somewhat different. The oxygen levels were closer to thirty percent than the present day twenty-one percent and the mix of some of the trace gases were different, too. Combine these changes and you get an atmosphere that leaves humans almost continuously aroused, or at least when you are not in some life-threatening situation, which even there, only accounts for about a quarter of your time."

I nodded. And here I thought it was the extreme cold that had abruptly stopped me from wanting to jump everyone's bones. Of course, the trigger for my thoughts about Bonnie and Caroline had been things we had really done and shared in the past, well before we had ever arrived in the Cretaceous era.

"Wow, you're freezing," exclaimed Caroline as she stepped up to me and wrapped her arms tightly about my body.

"N . . . not . . . helping," I stuttered out around clenched teeth. "Y . . you . . . are . . . un . . . undead, . . . re . . . remember?"

She took a small step back and began rubbing at almost full vampire speed my arms and the portion of my back not hidden under the backpack. Even with her ice cold hands, the friction quickly helped to warm my body and dry the regions of my clothing she was touching. It felt so good I almost asked her to do my front next. Oh, it might not have the same sexual overtones it did back in the Cretaceous, but right then it would have felt so wonderful.

"We need to get you, all of you, somewhere warm. None of you are dressed for this temperature."

Almost before the words were out, Connor abruptly said, "I think I smell a cooking fire."

I was almost surprised he could smell anything over the pungent aroma circling his and Abby's bodies. But in this case I was glad, cooking fires implied people, not more dinosaurs, and probably shelter, too.

"This way," said Caroline, taking the lead due to her greatly enhanced senses compared to us lowly humans. Wrapping one arm about me and the other about Bonnie, she forced us into motion while continuing to rub our exposed arms briskly.

After barely a five minute hike, we reached a roughly built log cabin. Only a barest flickering of light was visible through its small windows, but the smoke drifting out of its stone chimney smelled strongly of cooking meat, which must have been what had first attracted Connor's attention.

"What do we do now?" asked Bonnie through her own set of chattering teeth.

"We march up there and tell whoever answers that we are lost and cold and ask if we can come in to warm up," I stated in a tone not much louder than Bonnie's.

Bonnie nodded and then we began moving quickly forward at the thought of being somewhere warm.

When we reached the door, I gave the rough wood a sharp rap, stopping just short of outright pounding on it.

We waited what felt like an inordinate amount of time, but which truly probably wasn't much more than twenty seconds before the door creaked open with a soft, but distinct rasping sound of wood-on-wood hinges rather than metal-on-metal.

The interior of the modest cabin was only dimly lit by the small fire burning in the fireplace leaving the person standing before us only lit from behind and her face in shadows. Even from seeing barely more than an outline I could tell it was a woman of about my own height.

Finally, she took a half step forward to where her face was lit by the nearly full moon behind us and I was shocked that I recognized her. And that immediately told me we were NOT back home, for back home she had been dead for over a year.

"L . . . Lexi?" I asked in startled surprise through still chattering teeth.

She tilted her head to the side in a familiar way as she studied my face. "Yay, I beist Alexia. Prithee, how dost thou knowst me? For verily, I would dost rememberst if we had perchance met."

"Who is she? And why is she speaking all weird?" asked Caroline in a whisper.

I had only met Lexi on Stefan's one hundred and sixty second birthday and before the night was over I was forced to watch as Damon staked her through the heart and killed her. So I had talked to her twice for a grand total of less than five minutes. The first had been when I had arrived unexpectedly at the Salvatore Estate and she had answered the door wearing just a towel. The second had been a short conversation at The Grill about Stefan just minutes before she was killed.

So most of what I knew about her was from conversations with Stefan after her death, as I tried to help him cope with his grief - for she had been Stefan's oldest, closest friend among the vampires. At first I had been jealous of their relationship and had been almost certain they had been long time lovers. But as I had been slowly able to draw Stefan's feelings out, I came to realize they never had that sort of a relationship. No, the closest I can come to describe it is that Lexi had been an older, experienced sister to Stefan and always looked out for him and helped him when his baser instincts took control of his life. I know several times Stefan had become lost in his blood lust and it had always been Lexi who had pulled him free.

And from what I had learned from Katherine when she had delivered Klaus' blood to save Damon from the werewolf bite, Klaus had forced Stefan back onto human blood. I might need Lexi's help to restore Stefan once I figured out how to get him away from Klaus. I had never thought getting her help was a possibility since she was dead, but now she was standing right in front of me. However from her truly archaic way of speaking, this had to be a much, much younger Lexi. Had she even been turned yet? And if she had been turned, she must be an extremely young vampire. Would she have the self-control not to attack us? I knew from what Stefan had told me, she had always drunk human blood when it was available, even when she was weaning him of his addictions. Would it be safe to be around her? Did we have any choice? This cabin appeared to be in the middle of nowhere. Could we make it somewhere else tonight without her help?

Regardless of what we had to do next, we needed more information. Trying to phrase it in terms she would comprehend, I asked. "Pray tell, what year be this?"

She got a startled look on her face and then she took a moment to look us over again. I'm sure by her standards our attire was extremely outlandish. Hopefully, she would realize regardless of how we looked that we weren't adequately dressed for nighttime temperatures in the forties.

"This be the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred ninety two."

It was difficult while standing there freezing, but I did the math in my head. We were three hundred nineteen years in the past. Stefan had told me Lexi had been about three hundred fifty years old. Since she had looked in her early twenties when I had met her and she would have to be at least thirty years old now, there was a high probability she was a vampire and had been one for at least a few years.

I was trying to figure out how to best reply when Bonnie suddenly spoke.

"Oh my God, how far are we from Salem?"

"Salem be a half day's walk to the south. In faith, Ipswich to the north dost be much closer, perchance less than an hour. Wherefore dost thou ask? Be thee lost, childe?"

"Bonnie, what is it?" I asked, as I could see how agitated she was.

"It's 1692, the year of the Salem Witch Trials. My family got caught up in it and those that managed to escape moved to Mystic Falls."

"What be thy name, childe?" asked Lexi.

"Bonnie Bennett. These are my best friends, Elena Gilbert and Caroline Forbes. The others are Abby Maitland and Connor Temple, they are friends newly arrived from England."

"Thou be a Bennett? Then thee best be coming in. We have much upon which to speak this e'en."

**End of Chapter 4**

Author's Note: A little longer chapter to carry the story through the weekend and to start the next arc. I don't remember Vampire Diaries going into much detail about the events during the Salem Witch Trials, which led to the departure of the Bennett witches for Mystic Falls, so I decided to do my own little version of it. And since Lexi is just old enough to have been present, I thought blending an origin story for her into the Witch Trials would make it even more interesting. Throw in time anomalies and some Primeval predators and it's going to be a lot of fun!

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out my blog at duaneaakre wordpress com

Have a great day!

Duane


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Taking a deep breath, I stepped inside the small cabin and into a welcoming warmth. Lexi didn't look like she was about to attack us.

Bonnie was right behind me, but then I heard a curse from the doorway. Turning back, I saw Caroline standing frozen just outside. After a moment she stepped aside and gestured for Connor and Abby to precede her.

When I raised an eyebrow in her direction, Caroline gave a small shrug. "I can't come in. Only one of the human occupants of a home can invite me in."

"Thou beist a vampyre?" asked Lexi.

Caroline nodded.

"This place belongst to my daughter, Rachel. I expect her to returneth within the hour, which beist why I prepareth food. If thy wait, she mayeth invite thee in. Howeveresth, dost thou nothing to aggrieve her as she beist a strong witch."

Lexi had a daughter? And a witch at that? Stefan had never mentioned this. But then perhaps Lexi had never told him. Even though Stefan seemed incredibly long-lived from my perspective, he wouldn't even be born for another one hundred fifty years. Lexi had probably seen and done a lot she had never shared with him before she ever met him in that medical triage tent during the Civil War.

"Bonnie," I whispered. "Can you do some spell so we are all speaking the same version of English? I'm afraid all these _thee's_ and _thou's _are going to lead to a misunderstanding and the situation is too dangerous and volatile for that."

Bonnie raised an eyebrow and I could tell Lexi was able to hear what I was saying even if I was whispering. "Lexi is a really, really old friend of Stefan's."

Even though Bonnie and pre-vampire Caroline had been present at The Grill the night Lexi was there, I don't think either of them met her. And I had never discussed her with them. Neither of them had known about vampires back then and the topic of Lexi had been something special between me and Stefan. But regardless, Bonnie caught my meaning with the _old friend_ comment.

Bonnie turned to Lexi. "Would it be okay if I do a small magic to make it easier for us to speak? If you would rather I didn't do magic in your daughter's home or if you would prefer I wait until she is present, just tell me."

"Thine English be difficult to followst, forsooth. If thee canst make it easier, prithee proceed."

Bonnie nodded. Then after gazing around the room, she turned towards the door. "Caroline, can you find me seven small stones?"

Caroline, who had been leaning against the open door frame, nodded and then blurred away at vampire speed. By the time Bonnie had walked back over to the door, Caroline was standing there with her right hand filled with small stones.

Bonnie took the stones and moved over to the small rough-hewn wood table which was covered by a white cloth. She laid the stones out in a circular pattern and then held her right hand above them.

"Dea trader tua ad hoc munus," intoned Bonnie while passing her hand from left to right. Immediately in the dim light of the cabin the stones began to glow with a visible blue light. "Dona deae in lingua lapides."

The glow seemed to increase briefly until it was brighter than the fire in the fireplace before slowly fading away and the stones went back to looking like ordinary stones. Bonnie gathered them up in her hand and then passed them out to everyone.

"Is that better?" asked Bonnie to Lexi.

"Yes, much, thank you," replied the woman.

"Great. Everyone, as long as you carry these stones on your person, anyone you speak to will hear you in their language or dialect and you will hear them in yours," explained Bonnie.

"You mean it won't just work here with her version of English and ours, but it would also work if I went to someplace like say . . . ah . . . Russia?" asked Connor.

I could see wheels spinning in his head even as Bonnie replied. At first I couldn't see why he would have to deal with a lot of foreign languages while hunting monsters loosed on England by the anomalies, but then I abruptly understood. If he and Abby got stuck back in the Cretaceous Period, it meant their people were using the anomalies for time travel. And if they were traveling to other periods within recorded history, too, the ability to translate to any language would be extremely useful to them.

"Yes," replied Bonnie. "Making a, well for lack of a better term, a universal translator is actually easier than a language specific one, particularly when almost unlimited magic is available to draw on like here."

"Magic is as abundant here as back during the dinosaur era?" I asked feeling a little surprised. And the surprise must have shown on my face.

"Yes, I was surprised, too, as it feels almost as plentiful here," stated Bonnie. "That must explain why so many witches and so many really powerful witches existed back here. Of course, it makes me wonder why so much less magical energy is available in our time. Has it all been used up or has all the modern technology somehow disrupted it?"

I assumed the last question was rhetorical. For if Bonnie didn't know the answer, no way would I or any of the others.

"What do you mean by your time?" asked Lexi. "And what are dinosaurs?"

Obviously, just speaking the same language didn't suddenly make everything clear.

Then I wondered for a moment how to explain about dinosaurs to someone who had never heard of Darwin or evolution or the whole Creationism vs. Evolution debate.

"Do you remember the story of creation in the Book of Genesis?" I began.

"Of course. I may have lost my soul when I was turned into a vampire, but I learned my letters and my catechism and attended church when I was growing up," Lexi replied.

The first thing that crossed my mind at her words was how her obvious concern about having lost her soul during her conversion seemed so at odds with how the modern vampires I knew talked. I mean, Caroline never said anything about having lost her soul. How had Lexi's seventeenth century views shaped her vampire personality in ways different from the more recently turned vampires? And I included Stefan and Damon in the more recently turned category. The only other old vampires I knew were Katherine, Elijah, and Klaus. They were all hundreds of years older than Lexi, but none of them seemed to have the same hang up. So perhaps it wasn't Lexi's age that was the issue, but more her upbringing. For if she had been born here in the Massachusetts Colony, her formative, early years would have been much more Puritanical than the early years of the even older vampires I knew. It sounded almost like the old 'nature vs. nurture' question.

The next thing to cross my mind was whether she would tell me the story of how she ended up a vampire, if I asked. It was something Stefan had never told me, so it was certainly possible he didn't know either. But I tried not to get sidetracked; hopefully, it was a topic we could discuss in the future.

"Then you know how on the first day God created light and each subsequent day he created more and more aspects of the world until on the sixth day he created man and then on the seventh day he rested."

When Lexi nodded, I continued.

"Well, the best way to describe things is to say we unintentionally stepped through a doorway in time and ended up in the world as it existed on the fifth of God's days when all the lower forms of life came into existence. And dinosaurs were the most dominant form of life back then - coming in all shapes and sizes from small ones no bigger than a mouse, to large ones almost the size of the dragons in the old stories. Oh, these largest dinosaurs didn't breathe fire or fly like dragons, but they were the same general size and had similarly shaped bodies.

"After we found ourselves trapped there, Bonnie was able to use her magical gifts to open another doorway that led us here," I concluded.

"It sounds like a very scary place," stated Lexi.

"It was. And perhaps that's why God ultimately destroyed the dinosaurs before the start of his sixth day."

"And your own time?" Lexi prompted.

"We are from the year 2011, three hundred nineteen years in the future."

Lexi looked at all of us again, seemingly focused on our attire. Then she turned and gazed into the fire for several minutes. Finally, she turned back to us.

"I am being a poor host. Can I get you anything to eat or drink? I'm afraid the choice of fare is poor. Rachel spends most of her time in Ipswich these days and rarely brings guests out here. And, well, as you seem to be aware, I don't eat."

This seemed like a good opportunity to inquire about how Lexi had become a vampire, but just as I started to open my mouth, Caroline called out from her place outside the door.

"Someone is coming."

In a blur, Lexi was abruptly standing at the door. For several seconds I could read the tension in her posture, but then she relaxed. I assumed that meant the person Caroline had spotted was Lexi's daughter.

It was a long three minutes until Caroline stepped further back from the door and Lexi moved to hug the woman who abruptly appeared. When Lexi backed away, I got my first good look at the woman, or more accurately, girl. She looked roughly the same seventeen, as Bonnie, Caroline, and I and only a small handful of years younger than her mother. If Rachel was now about seventeen, then she must have been born around 1675. And if Lexi had been born around 1659, then she would have been about sixteen when she gave birth to Rachel. It sounded pretty young, but then the women back here probably had children a lot earlier than women up in the twenty-first century. And it wasn't like we didn't have a couple of girls in my grade in high school who already had children.

But the bigger surprise wasn't the closeness of Lexi and Rachel's apparent ages, rather it was how unalike they looked. Lexi was about five-six with blonde hair and extremely fair-skin that I suspected had been fair even before she became a vampire. And while it wasn't visible under her current austere dress, I knew from the time I had seen her in just a towel that she had a smoking-hot body.

Rachel, on the other hand, had coal black hair and a dark complexion. Oh, not quite as dark as Bonnie, but certainly a lot darker than I would have expected for Lexi's daughter. It made me instantly wonder about her father. Rachel stood at least four inches taller than Lexi and towered over all of us except Caroline and Connor. But while she was taller than most of us, I guessed she weighed less than any of us. She was thin as a rail. Definitely, she didn't look at all like Lexi.

**End of Chapter 5**

Author's Note: If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out my blog at duaneaakre wordpress com

Have a great day!

Duane


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

"Elena," I heard whispered from a mouth located right next to my ear, as my shoulder was lightly shaken. "It's time to wake up."

For a moment I thought it had all been a dream, and Caroline had spent the night at my house like she had done so often before – particularly in the weeks and months after my parents' deaths. But then I felt the hard, uneven wood floor pressing against my hip and shoulder. At least my head had been resting on something soft and it took me a blurry minute to realize it was Bonnie's chest and that my right arm was thrown across her body. For a second the lustful thoughts from the Cretaceous returned, but I forced myself to sit up and stretch.

The others were also stirring from their places scattered around the small cleared space we had created the night before by shoving the table up against the side wall. As I watched, I wondered why I wasn't more freaked out. Yesterday had started as an utterly normal day or as normal a day as we ever saw in Mystic Falls, but then we had passed through a hole in time and ended up in a world filled with dinosaurs. Then we had passed through another anomaly and ended up in seventeenth century New England. I should be going crazy, but then my gaze took in Bonnie and Caroline. Perhaps it would be different if I was here alone. But with the death of my parents and Jenna, only four people really mattered anymore in my life and two of them were right here.

Forcing my attention back to the current situation, I asked, "What time is it?" I barely got the words out before I was caught up in a giant yawn. Yesterday had been such a screwed up day, my body felt jetlagged.

"It is almost dawn," answered Lexi and I could hear more than a hint of apprehension in her voice as her eyes flicked to the small window. "You need to be up and on your way, if you are going to reach Salem before the better part of the day is gone. I have laid out what spare clothing we have. I'm afraid it isn't much, but it should be enough to make you passable, if not respectable."

"You make it sound like you're not coming with us," I said around another yawn.

Lexi's eyes flicked to the window again. "The sun will be up soon. I have a hiding place under the floor. It is quite small, but I think Caroline can squeeze in with me for the day."

"Why would I want to do that?" asked Caroline with a disgusted expression. Then the situation dawned on her and she held up her hand. "Don't you have a ring? I assumed since your daughter was a witch, she would have made you one."

Lexi shook her head and from her expression, it was apparent she didn't know what Caroline was talking about. Then I remembered how she didn't have a ring when we met up in the future either and therefore had been forced to spend the day trapped indoors at the Salvatore's place.

"A witch can create a special, magically enchanted ring that allows vampires to walk in daylight without being hurt," I explained.

"Really?" asked Lexi skeptically. "I have never heard of anything like that."

I turned to Bonnie. "Bonnie can you make a ring for Lexi so she can go with us? Having a second person besides Rachel with us who is from these times seems like a good idea. And I hate to see Lexi trapped in a nighttime only existence."

"Okay," replied Bonnie before glancing around. Finally her eyes settled on my right hand. "Elena, since this is your idea, I think you are going to have to donate your ring to the cause."

I looked down at my hand. I was wearing this really old mood ring. It had originally been my mother's. She had once told me they had been all the rage back in the mid 1970s and she had been sixteen when she had gotten it. Since she and my father had died, it had been sitting in my jewelry box unworn. Finally, after Isobel's, John's, and Jenna's recent deaths, I had dug it out a few days ago and started to wear it as a reminder of happier times.

But I was starting to get a glimmering of ideas on how to get Stefan back and get my revenge on Klaus and those ideas would require Lexi's help. And sacrificing the ring was a price I was happy to pay.

Rachel had drifted over with an interested expression. As I handed the ring to Bonnie, I turned in Lexi's direction.

"Lexi, I am glad to help you in this way, but it comes with one string attached. In your distant future, you will meet a young man, or rather a young vampire, named Stefan Salvatore and also his brother, Damon, another vampire. You will know them and be friends with Stefan for years and years and years. The stipulation is that you must never tell them you have a special ring or let them see you out in the daylight. For neither of them will be aware you have one when they finally meet me three hundred years from now."

Lexi nodded solemnly and for a second I thought she was going to swear to it in God's name before she seemed to remember she no longer had a soul.

"I swear."

I smiled and nodded in turn before gesturing to Bonnie that she could begin. I had done what I could to give Lexi the ability to walk in daylight while not changing the future where Stefan didn't think she had a ring.

Of course, I no longer had any intention of leaving the future totally unchanged. I knew the day and the hour and the place of Lexi's death and I needed to figure out a way to prevent it from happening. I had no idea at the moment how to accomplish this, but fortunately, I had three hundred years to come up with a way.

But just in case time turned out to be immutable, I wasn't going to let a minor detail like Lexi dying in 2009 stop me. I had a very much alive, okay, technically a very much undead, Lexi with me at the moment. Once Bonnie did whatever it was she thought she needed to do back here and opened another anomaly back to our present, I was going to try to convince Lexi to come with us. I hadn't quite figured out how to then get her back here to live out her original life, but if I had to I would. The important thing was to save Stefan and ensure Klaus paid the ultimate price for destroying my family.

Bonnie did her mumbo-jumbo thing while Rachel watched intently and then Bonnie handed the old novelty ring to Lexi. The sun was just breaking the horizon as she slipped it on. Then, with an obvious look of trepidation, Lexi raised her hand until just her fingertips were exposed to the first beam of sunlight to penetrate the window. She looked ready to jerk her hand back at the first hint of pain, but when none came, she slowly extended her hand further and further into the light. After pausing for almost two minutes, she finally moved until the sunlight shown directly on her face.

"Wow," she said with the first wide smile I had seen on her face since we had arrived back here the previous evening. "It has been nine years since I last stood in the sun."

Then she turned and nodded to both Bonnie and me. "Thank you, so much. I don't know how I can ever repay you for this incredible gift."

"Don't worry; I'm sure we can think of something." I must have sprouted an evil little grin, because Lexi suddenly tilted her head and looked speculatively at me.

**End of Chapter 6**

Author's Note:

A shorter chapter than usually, but this felt like a fun little story explaining how and where Lexi really acquired the mood ring she was wearing during the episode '162 Candles' and its special secret significance.

The next chapter will delve a little into Lexi's life before becoming a vampire and how she ended up with a witch for a daughter.

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out my blog at duaneaakre wordpress com

Have a great day!

Duane


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

I felt almost like one of the nuns in the old 'Flying Nun' TV show Jeremy and I had watched on _Nick at Nite_ when we were younger. Oh, I wasn't wearing the weird headgear that allowed Sally Field to fly, just a heavy, dark scarf. But together with a highly starched, floor-length black dress, which did feel like a nun's habit, the effect was austere and so religious as to feel, frankly, puritanical. Hopefully, it would help keep my thoughts away from the elicit topics that had been plaguing me since our little sojourn back in the Cretaceous.

But while the dress alone might not fully restrain my thoughts, at least the dress' skirt had the advantage of being long enough to hide my Converse High-tops. Lexi and Rachel had several spare dresses to spread among us and scrounged up a ragged old set of work clothes for Connor, but they each only possessed a single pair of shoes. I would hate to have had to walk the full twelve miles to Salem with bare feet.

We had set off within thirty minutes of the rising of the sun and had been on the road for almost three hours. I was tired and hungry and I think so was everyone else. Well, everyone except Lexi, who giggled and laughed and danced around the rest of us, as though this was the best day in her life. And after nine years of living only at night, perhaps it did seem like the best day to her.

I paused and lowered to the ground the awkward burlap bag that was hiding my book bag and other possessions. After flexing my fingers for a moment, I reached up, pulled out my earbuds, and turned off the music my iPhone had been playing. We were getting close enough to Salem where we might run into someone. And with people being executed for being witches, it was probably best to not be seen flashing around what might be considered an infernal machine from the devil.

And I needed to save some of its battery for later, for who knew when I would next be able to charge it. It was probably a good thing I had pulled it out the previous evening to demonstrate one of the things the future would bring, as Connor immediately asked if we had put our phones in flight mode since they would quickly eat up their batteries looking for nonexistent cell towers or GPS satellites. Then he got real excited after playing with it for a moment and discovering it had a built-in compass feature. Apparently, the iPhones of his era didn't have this feature and it could be useful in detecting anomalies, which put out a strong magnetic field. After less than five minutes of working with it, Connor handed it back saying he had tweaked the compass app so the phone would vibrate when it detected a strong magnetic field from anywhere other than north. Then he made the same tweak to Bonnie's and Caroline's phones, too. Of course, it would only be useful if we ran into another anomaly in the next couple of days, assuming we were stuck in this or some other time period without electricity for that long.

Interestingly, Lexi and Rachel had seemed more impressed by my history book than by my phone, but then since we were in the seventeenth century, most of the best features of a phone weren't apparent and were difficult to explain to someone who had never seen a device remotely like it before. But Rachel had been utterly taken by the history book and had been looking at it when I had fallen asleep the previous evening and was again looking at it when I woke up in the morning. Even now, she had spent most of the morning's hike reading from it as we walked. But if it was time for the iPhone to be put away, it was also time for a history book covering the next three hundred years to be returned to the burlap bag, too.

The others had also paused to rest and I took the opportunity to move over to Rachel to get the book back. After it was stowed safely away, I turned to her and gestured for her to join me as I started trudging down the overgrown lane again.

"So, I hope I'm not prying, or at least not too much, but I am curious. What is your and your mother's story? I mean, I don't think I have ever met a mother and daughter who looked less alike."

Rachel strode along in silence for so long I thought I had offended her by asking about her past. But eventually she responded. "How much do you know about these times, if you are truly from the distant future?"

I thought about it for a second and then shrugged. "Actually, not much, probably even less than what you might expect after looking at that history book. I know the Pilgrims arrived from England in the early 1600s. And how the Thanksgiving tradition started when the Indians shared their food to help the Pilgrims survive their first winter, but then it is all pretty much a blank until the Revolutionary War in 1776."

Rachel shot me a somewhat bewildered look; I'm sure she had spent a lot of her time with the book focusing on the years in her immediate future rather than things in the much more distant future. And I'm certain it covered a lot of American history between the pilgrims' arrival and the Revolutionary War, which I had never bothered to read or had simply forgotten.

But then she turned back to the subject at hand. "You are right about the first Thanksgiving, at least according to the stories I have heard. But our dealings with the Indians have not always been so . . . ah . . . so congenial. As more and more settlers arrived over time from England and other places in Europe, they steadily encroached on lands the Indians considered their own. Occasionally, hostilities broke out, particularly when some strong leader came to power in one of the tribes.

"It all came to a peak in 1675 when Metacomet came to power among the Wampanoag Indians and united them with a number of the other tribes in the area. Numerous towns and villages were attacked throughout Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island and several women were carried away as booty, including my mother.

"She was held captive for five months before she escaped. And when she arrived back in civilization, she was pregnant with me. Life here is very hard for an unmarried, pregnant woman. And my mother was doubly cursed when I was born and it became obvious my father was an Indian."

Instantly, _The Scarlett Letter_ sprang to mind. Oh, I haven't ever read the book, but I had seen the movie with Demi Moore. And the fact we were currently all dressed like her character was probably a factor. It had been set in this general time frame and Hester, Demi's character, had had an extremely hard life as a result of having a daughter after an adulterous affair. But at least the father in that story had been white. Lexi's situation had probably been ten times worse.

"I'm sorry," was all I could think to say.

"No need to be sorry, you weren't the cause of the situation," Rachel replied stoically. Then her voice changed subtly as she returned to her narrative. "I only heard this second and third hand, mostly from other children in school who would taunt me. Once it became apparent I had been fathered by an Indian, the town's council wanted to take me away from my mother and return me to the Indians. However my mother refused and raised me herself. Her family disowned her when she returned to town pregnant, but did help with the construction of a small house on the edge of town where she lived until I was born and then where we lived together until I was seven."

From Lexi's current apparent age, that had to be about the time she was turned and became a vampire. "What happened then?" I asked quietly to keep Rachel speaking without disrupting her story.

"I had just turned seven when I began to manifest my magical gifts. Oh, nothing as grand as opening doorways through time or magically enchanting stones and rings. In the beginning it was just simple things like levitating small objects or lighting candles by just thinking about it.

"I think these things scared mother and that's when she broke down and told me about my father. His name was Nashawhonan and he was the shaman of the Pennacook tribe. She had seen him perform feats of magic and assumed it was from him that I had received my abilities. But she never told anyone about him or his abilities for fear of being accused of using witchcraft herself and she had troubles enough being the unwed mother of a half-breed daughter.

"But now that I was starting to demonstrate magical abilities, she felt it was time to tell me what she knew of my heritage. She even talked for a time of sending me to live with my father's tribe, but I cried and begged to stay with her and promised to be careful to never use my gifts around other people.

"Mother finally relented, but in the end it didn't really matter as our lives were about to drastically change anyway. For shortly after the revelation about my father, a dark handsome stranger arrived in Salem from London. Even after seven years, mother was still a social outcast, so the fact the man was drawn to her was very scandalous. The man, Elijah Smith, was a wealthy merchant. He built a large house in the best quarter of the town with a view of the harbor. And by the time it was finished, he had married my mother and we moved in with him."

Had the human Lexi been married to _The Elijah_? He had also gone by Elijah Smith when he had first arrived in Mystic Falls in pursuit of me when he discovered I was a Petrova doppelgänger. But before I let my thoughts get away from me, I forced my attention back to Rachel's story.

"The next couple of months were the happiest of my life and I think possibly the happiest of my mother's, too. With her marriage to such an important man, the town council and the upper crust of Salem's citizens were forced to accept her back into the fold. Even her family, who were also among Salem's elite, would acknowledge us out in public. Well, they would speak to my mother; I don't think any of them ever spoke to me, the half-breed bastard daughter, during this time.

"But an easy life as never seemed to be my mother's or my destiny. Three months later, on May 17, 1683, Elijah traveled to New York on one of his ships on business and took mother with him. That was the last time I ever saw Elijah. Mother showed back up in the middle of the night six months later, changed like she is now, only wilder and less in control. She couldn't stay in Salem when she could only come out at night; within a few days the servants and others would notice. And it didn't help that she killed Elizabeth, one of the maids, by draining her of blood that first night. So she disappeared into the wilderness.

"After that I only saw her once or twice a year until six months ago when I was old enough to acquire the cabin. We have seen each other more regularly since then and she now has better control of her blood lust, but, as I said, our lives have never been easy."

From what she had said, it didn't sound like Rachel knew that Elijah was a vampire. It also didn't sound like she knew the story of how Lexi had been turned. I guess if I wanted to find that out, I would have to ask Lexi directly. Not that it was really germane to our situation; knowing it would merely sake my curiosity. And how Lexi had spent her time in the wilderness was something I didn't want to think about too much. I had seen enough of what some of the wilder vampires back home (cough, cough, Damon, cough, cough) were capable of to easily imagine the path of destruction Lexi could have caused. And if she blamed the Indians for being the start of the downward spiral of her personal situation, I wouldn't have wanted to have been an Indian within a hundred miles of Salem during those years.

"So what happened to you after Lexi disappeared during the trip to New York and never _officially_ returned?"

"Nothing great. Oh, I spent a few more months staying in the Smith house, but eventually it was decided both Elijah and my mother must be dead and his property was distributed to his heirs. And, of course, his heirs didn't include the half-breed seven-year-old daughter of his newly acquired wife. His money and the rights to his fleet of ships and the house went to someone back in England. And I ended up in the Salem Orphanage until I turned sixteen."

I had seen medieval orphanages in enough old movies, TV shows, and books to know they were never pleasant, fun places. And for a young girl with an Indian father it had to have been even worse. She was definitely right about neither her nor Lexi ever catching any breaks. Even when Elijah had come into their lives things had only improved for a handful of months.

Just then the other primary subject of my thoughts came flitting up.

"What have the two of you been talking about for the last mile? You both look so somber and serious. It is time to lighten up. Salem is just over the next rise. It is going to be so great, I haven't been here in nine years, well, at least not during daylight," enthused Lexi.

I stared at her face for a moment. Ever since receiving the ring, she had been almost continuously displaying a broad smile, which accentuated her impossibly high cheek bones. She looked more radiant than seemed humanly possible. Of course, all vampires seemed to have this gift. Even Caroline, whom I had known all my life, looked more gorgeous since her transformation into one of the undead.

But the transformation in Lexi's appearance between when we first met her the previous evening and now out in daylight with a big smile was almost startling. It was like ten years had been stripped from her age. And that reminded me, "Lexi, aren't you concerned about people wondering about your apparent youth? I mean you still look in your early twenties, but everyone will expect you to be in your thirties. And no way do you look in your thirties."

"If you are so worried about that, why did you suggest I come along?" Lexi shot back.

"Ah, because it was early in the morning and I hadn't yet had my coffee?"

"Coffee?" echoed Lexi while Rachel looked on with an equally confused expression.

Damn, I thought they were simply too poor to have any in their cabin, not that it didn't even exist yet here. When had coffee first arrived in North America anyway? Normally to answer a trivia question like this, I would just whip out my iPhone and hit the wiki site. No coffee and no wiki, how did people make it through the day back here?

**End of Chapter 7**

Author's Note:

The Vampire Diaries never gave much early history for Lexi, so I thought it might be fun to fill in a few of the details. Having her be from Salem and having a daughter who was a witch seemed to dovetail nicely with the next section of the story which will explore the involvement of Bonnie's family with the Salem Witch trials – another topic that has been eluded to in the show, but never explored in any depth.

The last few chapters have been focused on plot development and character backstory, but the action will start ramping back up in the next chapter.

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out my blog at duaneaakre wordpress com

Have a great day!

Duane


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

I'm not certain what I was expecting as we first entered 1692 Salem. Being over three hundred years in the past sounded so long ago, I had been subconsciously expecting something like the log house Lexi and Rachel shared or maybe even the sod houses from _The Little House on the Prairie_ books. But what I saw looked almost mundane. Oh, the main streets were cobblestone instead of paved and no electrical or phone lines or TV antennas were anywhere in sight. But most of the houses were of the standard wood design that wouldn't look out of place in modern Mystic Falls.

Then the bigger peculiarity rose to the surface of my thoughts – where were all the people? I heard dogs barking and saw cats lounging in the shade of various front porches. Looking more intently at the houses we passed, I saw goats and chickens penned up in many backyards, but still no people.

"Where is everyone?" I asked at little more than a whisper as the eeriness of the situation made my skin crawl.

Rachel glanced around and I saw the beginnings of an uneasy expression on her face.

"I haven't been down here to Salem in almost a month, but the last time I saw anything like this here or up in Ipswich was back in July when five people were executed for being witches. Five more were executed in August, but I wasn't in Salem that day. But on the day in July the whole town seemed to assemble on the central green in front of the meeting house. I have this sinking feeling today is another day of executions."

"What is today's date?" asked Bonnie as she stepped up on the other side of Rachel.

"The twenty-second of September."

"Damn," exclaimed Bonnie before briefly clasping her hand over her mouth while her eyes darted around. We both knew after our discussions with Rachel and Lexi that uttering that word back here without it being in an appropriate biblical context might be sufficient grounds to be sentenced to a day of pillorying.

"What is it?" I whispered in reply.

"Today is the day two of my ancestors were among those executed. When I found out the anomaly had dropped us here, I had been hoping we would have more time to warn them away."

"Then we better hurry," said Rachel. As she quickened her pace, she pointed ahead. "The Holy Trinity Church fronts on the central green directly across from the town's meeting house."

I glanced in the direction she indicated and could just make out the white spire among the trees covered in the brilliant red, yellow, and orange leaves of autumn. The central green had to be roughly four or five blocks ahead.

Bonnie had almost broken into a run at Rachel's words, but Rachel quickly called her back.

"Bonnie, don't run. You don't want to draw any attention to yourself, particularly not today. Most of the people being accused are not real witches, just people who someone dislikes. And you are a complete stranger here."

"But what if we are too late?" exclaimed Bonnie in an anxious tone, however she did slow herself to the mere brisk walk Rachel was maintaining.

Rachel shrugged. "God must have had a reason he chose the timing of your arrival here. You need to trust him."

Bonnie and her Grandmother had never been churchgoers and I had always associated witches with pagans, but it certainly sounded like Rachel was a serious Christian.

Bonnie looked askew at Rachel and for a moment I thought she was going to make some snide remark, but then she just turned her eyes resolutely forward. I knew my best friend well and could almost see the wheels spinning in her head as she prepared to do whatever was necessary to save her suddenly not-so-distant ancestors. And with the level of magic available for her to draw on back here, what she might be able to do could be spectacular.

Then a disconcerting thought occurred to me. If the witches here had a fraction of the abilities Bonnie had displayed back in the Cretaceous, how had the officials been able to hold and then execute them? It suddenly seemed important to understand this before we potentially got caught up in the same situation, because I hadn't come here to end up being burned at the stake. No, I wasn't going to let myself be stupidly killed before I had my revenge on Klaus and had freed Stefan.

"Ah, wait a second, guys," I said, as I ground to a halt.

Abby and Connor, who had been walking behind us, almost bumped into me at my abrupt stop. Rachel and the others also stopped. Bonnie stopped, too, but her glance kept darting towards our destination and her expression was darkening. I quickly asked my question, because if someone was going to feel her wrath today, I didn't want it to be me.

"Rachel, how are they able to restrain and execute witches? If witches are so powerful here, why don't they simply defeat their opponents?"

My remark caught Bonnie's attention and she suddenly was looking speculatively at Rachel. Obviously, this question hadn't occurred to her.

"Cold Iron," Rachel replied. "A witch bound by it cannot access her powers. Agents of the Court generally arrive in the middle of the night and have the witches bound in iron shackles before they are awake. And they are held in the manacles all through the trials and all the way to the executions."

"And other witches don't come to their aid?" asked Bonnie hotly.

Rachel lifted her shoulders in a helpless gesture. "Usually all the members of a family or a coven are gathered up at once. And others don't want to get involved in case their own special nature hasn't come to light."

"Well, I'm not shackled in iron and I AM going to save my family, whatever it takes," stated Bonnie in terms that left no room for argument before she turned and stalked away in the direction of the town's center.

Caroline and I shared a glance and the tall vampire just rolled her eyes. Bonnie had always been the most self-righteous of us and it had sometimes caused situations that didn't end well. But even when she had gone up against Klaus while drawing on the power of a hundred dead witches, I didn't think she had had access to power like she had back in the dinosaur times or possibly here. If she deployed a blast of energy anything like what she had used against the velociraptors, she could kill half the people in town. Quickly, I gestured for Caroline and the others to follow me; we had to try to restrain Bonnie if she got carried away.

I hurried after Bonnie at almost a run, the burlap bag banging awkwardly against my right side. We raced for almost two blocks before abruptly turning a corner and running smack into the back edge of the large crowd.

I had read stories about medieval executions and in many of them the days had been almost like a festival with vendors selling confectionaries and the crowds hooting and jeering. But this situation was nothing like that. The whole crowd looked extremely solemn and serious. And they were also unusually quiet. The only voice I heard was a man standing up front haranguing the crowd. All of his words didn't carry to where we stood at the very back, but enough did so I could tell he fell into the category of _fire-and-brimstone_ preacher.

"That's the Reverend Cotton Mather," said Rachel quietly from where she had stepped up beside me. "He's up from the North Church in Boston. And if you ask me, things would never have gotten so far as people being executed without his meddling."

Her words barely registered as I took in the scene before me. The man was wearing a heavily embroidered long black coat which was open at the front revealing an equally fancy black vest festooned with several rows of gold buttons. A large, highly starched white collar extended almost halfway down the front of the vest. And topping it all off was one of those large white wigs that you saw in old movies. In person it looked about as ludicrous as in the theater.

But nothing else was ludicrous about the current situation unless you looked at it in some gallows humor way. And for the first time in my life _gallows humor_ had taken on a new connotation. I had never been particularly interested in the Salem witch trials or their consequences - that had been Bonnie's thing. I had always heard stories of witches being burned at the stake so I had thought the same thing had happened in Salem. But it turned out the executions here were by hanging, not burning.

The gallows had been set up in front of the town's main meeting hall and already eight corpses wrapped in iron chains and shackles were hanging grotesquely by their necks, the last two still visibly twitching. Only two teenaged African-American girls, who looked so alike they had to be twins, remained standing. And even from way in the back, I could see the terror in their eyes. The next two in line, the pair that were still twitching, were an older man and woman also African American. The other six bodies were all white, so some or all of the last four had to be Bonnie's ancestors.

I had seen a lot of deaths in the last couple of years in Mystic Falls, but none of them had been quite like these, which seemed inordinately premeditated.

Suddenly, I realized Bonnie was no longer beside me, but forcing her way forward through the crowd. And people around and in front of her were being thrown back; their bodies twisting and jerking like they were being electrocuted before they slammed into others who were trying to get clear.

And that's when I saw the lightning bolts crackling around Bonnie's hands. For an instant the image of the Emperor from the _Star Wars_ movies flashed through my mind. But those had only been movies and this was real. Bonnie was hurting people and I could easily picture her ramping up until she was completely out of control. We had to do something fast.

As I moved to follow my best friend, I couldn't see how the situation could get any worse. Then I realized my iPhone was vibrating madly in my pocket. An anomaly was opening somewhere nearby.

**End of Chapter 8**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out at duaneaakre wordpress com

Have a great day!

Duane


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

Salem's central green, which moments earlier had been utterly silent except for the ranting of the preacher up on the gallows, was filled with the screams of the terrified, fleeing crowd. And screams suddenly weren't the only sound. Bonnie had raised her hands and now, instead of small two or three foot long tendrils of lightning dancing around, massive bolts were streaming forth. I watched as one at least two feet in diameter arced all the way to the top of the nearby church spire, which promptly exploded in a ball of fire. And just like with real lightning, it was accompanied by a massive blast of thunder that was so close and so loud; I was forced to my knees.

"YOU WILL NOT HURT MY FAMILY!" shrieked Bonnie in a voice that sounded almost as loud as the preceding clap of thunder. Then more giant bolts of lightning sprang from her hands and struck the roof of the meeting house, the far end of the gallows' main crossbeam, and several nearby trees. Everything they touched instantly burst into flames.

The noise and the intensity of everything was simply overwhelming. I realized I was huddled on the ground with my hands clapped tightly over my ears. I forced myself to glance around and discovered the rest of our little party similarly on the ground around me. By now, most of the crowd had managed to stagger away and we were fully exposed.

It was probably their vampiric nature, but Caroline and Lexi looked to be in the best shape. Quickly, I slithered my way over to the two blondes.

"Caroline, Lexi," I almost shouted to be heard over the sudden whirlwind that had descended on the green from the clear blue sky. "You need to go get the girls free," I continued while pulling one hand from my ear and gesturing towards the scaffolding. "Getting them clear is the only thing I can think of that might help get Bonnie back under control."

Caroline nodded, touched Lexi's arm and received a nod of acknowledgement, rose to a crouch, and then sprang forward at full vampire speed.

But even as fast as they were, they had covered less than half the distance to the gallows when a brilliant gold light suddenly bathed the greens. Looking to my right, I saw a massive anomaly burst into existence. It had to be at least twice as large as the first one we had passed through in the Porsche and five or six times the size of the one we had used to escape the Cretaceous Era.

Almost before it had completely coalesced into the familiar glittering crystalline structure, something came slithering forth. As it began to clear the brilliant central glow of the anomaly, I could make out a massive serpent's head. It headed in the general direction of the gallows and as it moved more and more of the long snake-like body emerged. And emerged. And emerged. By the time its tail finally appeared, it seemed to stretch across half the width of the green. The giant snake had to be at least four or five feet in diameter and over fifty feet long.

And then a second one began to emerge.

"Damn," exclaimed Connor, who along with Abby and Rachel were now huddled near me. "I've seen a lot of creatures before, but I never expected to see one of these, here."

"You recognize it?" I asked, as I felt my body screaming at me to run away. Just like Indiana Jones, I hated snakes and this one was so large it seemed like _snake_ was almost too benign of a term for it. This snake looked perfectly capable of swallowing a person whole. Hell, it looked capable of swallowing the whole offensive line of Mystic High's football team.

"It's a Titanoboa Cerrejonesis. The first archeological evidence of their existence was discovered in 2006. They existed about sixty million years ago during the Paleocene Epoch, the next period after the dinosaur extinction event."

It sounded like Connor was about to launch into a whole doctoral thesis on the topic, so I jumped back in.

"Well, giant snake, Eww. I think that thing is scarier than the T. Rex was."

"Oh, I don't know," interjected Abby. "I think the giant centipede, which was similar in size but with hundreds of legs, was a lot scarier than this."

"Giant centipede?" I echoed as a wave of revulsion shook my body. Perhaps that would be worse.

"Oh, you wouldn't believe all the shit that has come out of anomalies back home."

The first giant snake had reached the far end of the gallows and was slithering up the staircase. Time to get our thoughts back on the present, hopefully, there would be time to tell horror stories somewhere in the future.

I could see Caroline and Lexi had reached the two bound girls and were working at their restraints. The nearest giant snake was less than twenty-five feet away from them and sliding along the floor of the gallows. But the preacher, his white wig now all askew, stood between them.

"Spawn of Satan get back!" he shouted while holding aloft a silver cross he had pulled from an inside pocket of his jacket.

"No, it is YOU who are doing the devil's work killing innocent people," raged Bonnie, as she steadily moved closer to the gallows - lightning bolts still arcing out from her hands and crashing down all around the minister. "It is only right and fitting that a serpent should take your forked tongue."

As the snake and the lightning bolts got closer, Caroline and Lexi gave up undoing the girls' bindings and simply tossed them over their shoulders and jumped to the ground from the end of the scaffolding. Quickly, they raced over to where we were still crouched.

"We have to get out of here!" I shouted although my gaze was trapped on the tableau in front of us just as firmly as everyone else's.

"We can't just leave these snakes here," replied Abby. "What if they breed and multiply? No natural predators exist here to keep their numbers down. They could potentially overrun the planet."

"And what do you suggest? Do you have a snake charmer's flute and intend to lead them back through the anomaly? I mean if the other side of this anomaly is teaming with these things, no way am I going through there." As I finished speaking, I tried to avert my eyes, but couldn't. The minister had been trapped between the snake and Bonnie's lightning. The snake reached him first. It wasn't pretty.

I wondered briefly if he was supposed to die today even if we and giant snakes hadn't shown up.

"Too bad these magic stones don't let me speak Parseltongue," interjected Connor. "Perhaps I could just tell them to go back through the anomaly."

I stared at him. Only a true geek would throw out a lame suggestion from _Harry Potter_ at a time like this. How had he survived a year in the Cretaceous?

Salem's green was suddenly quiet. The death of the minister seemed to suck all the life and magic out of Bonnie. I watched as she sagged to her knees from where she stood about forty feet in front of us.

Caroline had gotten most of the bindings removed from the frightened young girl who she had carried down from the gallows. Now, up close, I could see she looked roughly the same seventeen as us.

"Caroline, go get Bonnie," I suggested. I would have gone myself, but Bonnie looked absolutely wilted and might need to be carried. And Caroline was a lot, lot stronger than me.

But I had only one eye on Bonnie, the other was on the snakes. The one up on the scaffolding was now in the process of slithering down. Both it and its companion were headed in our general direction. I had a sinking feeling it might have just acquired a taste for human flesh.

"We need to get out of here," I said, repeating my earlier comment, but with an increased sense of urgency. No way did I want to be another appetizer for the giant snake.

**End of Chapter 9**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out my blog at: duaneaakre (dot) wordpress (dot) com

Have a great day!

Duane


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

"I don't have a snake charmer's flute," said Abby, following up on my previous snide remark. "But I think the snakes will follow us for at least a little while. If we could open up another anomaly to the London of our time, they should follow us through. And our people should be capable of dealing with them."

The snakes were only a hundred feet away and closing, as I nodded in reply. Immediately, I turned to where Caroline had just set Bonnie on the ground next to me. Fortunately, Bonnie wasn't unconscious, but she did look more than a little woozy and unfocused.

"Bonnie, we need to get out of here, now. Can you open another portal like you did when we needed to get out of the Cretaceous Era? Only this time open one to 2009 London?"

As I waited for her response I took in the already existing anomaly through which the pair of giant snakes had come. Nothing else had followed them, but we could hardly leave it hanging there when we departed. And that brought to mind the whole question of its opening when and where it had. What were the odds of an anomaly appearing and then disgorging a pair of giant satanic looking snakes at that precise moment and not thirty minutes earlier or later, or a mile in some other direction? The odds seemed infinitesimally small like winning Powerball on your first try. No, I strongly suspected it had been Bonnie's doing whether it had been a conscious or subconscious act.

"And Bonnie, you need to close that other anomaly first," I appended.

She nodded, but then asked. "Are the girls okay?"

I glanced over. "They're fine."

Then I added in their direction. "Girls, this is Bonnie, your great, great, great, great, great-granddaughter. Now this is very important. We are about to leave and we are going to try to get the snakes to follow us. I think after what they have seen here today, no one in Salem is going to bother you for at least the next few hours. But it is best if you leave town as soon as you can. A new town in Virginia called Mystic Falls has recently been established. If you go there and maintain a low profile, you and your descendants will be safe for hundreds of years. Let me say this again. Go to Mystic Falls, Virginia and you will be safe. Do you understand?"

When they both nodded their heads, I pointed in the direction away from the snakes. "Go now. Hurry!"

With only one lingering glance back at the gallows and what had to be the bodies of their parents, the twins raced away.

Caroline was helping Bonnie to her feet and when I checked, the first snake had already closed to within fifty feet.

"Bonnie, we need to hurry," I said, my voice spontaneously dropping almost to a whisper as my fear of snakes ramped up again.

Bonnie stared from the snakes to the already open anomaly. Then she said, "Rachel, I feel absolutely drained. You are going to have to help me."

Without even replying, Rachel stepped closer and clasped Bonnie's right hand in hers. Immediately, Bonnie jolted more erect and shook slightly. Her eyes blazed as though she had slammed a gallon of Starbucks caffeine.

Then somehow they were perfectly in sync and both witches began chanting the same words. In less than five seconds the first anomaly began to visibly fade. Abruptly rotating one hundred eighty degrees, the pair of witches began a new sequence of words and another slightly smaller anomaly opened before us.

It had hardly solidified, when I started shoving people forward. The first snake was barely twenty feet behind us.

As Connor and Abby dashed through the anomaly and Bonnie and Caroline followed behind, Lexi ground to a halt.

"Come on, Lexi, we need to hurry."

"Rachel and my places are here not in the future."

I glanced back at the still approaching pair of snakes. We didn't have time for this.

"I need your help with a project, consider it your payment for the ring. We will see that you are returned when it is over. And the future is a safer place for a witch like Rachel."

Even though I had known her for barely twelve hours, I was certain her Puritan upbringing had given her a strong sense of duty and debt. And that along with her concern for her daughter's welfare were the strongest buttons I could think to push.

It took only a second for Lexi to make her decision. She grabbed Rachel's hand and ran for the anomaly.

So that's how I, the one with the biggest fear of snakes, ended up being tail-end Charlie. I raced after the others with only one backwards glance. The church's tower, the meeting hall, and several trees were all ablaze. Hopefully, they had some version of a fire brigade and wouldn't wait too long before reappearing after the previous horrific events or we might have just started the destruction of the whole town. But there was nothing we could do about that now. The snakes were still closing and it wasn't a time to dawdle.

I ran through the anomaly and slammed straight into the backs of Lexi and Rachel. I hit them so hard; Rachel was knocked to the pavement, while I bounced off the incredibly strong vampire and almost tumbled back through the anomaly.

"The snakes are right behind me. You have to move," I shrieked, as I grabbed Rachel to drag her back to her feet.

Caroline came racing back and threw the other vampire across her shoulder, as I pulled Rachel's arm. She half stumbled and half ran, while her eyes darted wildly around.

The anomaly had opened in the middle of a busy street in what had to be the business district of some major city, hopefully our target of London. At least a dozen cars had collided in an attempt to miss the solid looking obstruction of the anomaly. Now horns were blaring and the sound echoed wildly off the ten to twenty story buildings surrounding us. I could easily grasp the shock the sight must have been to Lexi and Rachel who had never seen a city bigger than seventeenth century Boston.

I spotted Bonnie, Connor, and Abby standing at the edge of the sidewalk about seventy feet from us just as Caroline raced by with Lexi. I headed in that direction and knew to the second when the snakes began to emerge from the anomaly, as the sound of car horns was abruptly drowned out by screaming and then the sound of people fleeing.

By the time we reached the curb I was breathing hard, more from the last twenty minutes worth of adrenaline than from actual exhaustion. After dropping the burlap bag that contained all my possessions, which I had somehow managed to hang on to, I turned back and saw both of the snakes had followed us through.

"Bonnie, close the anomaly," I panted.

"No, wait," interjected Connor, as she began to raise her hands. "Nothing else dangerous is going to follow us through from 1692. Unless the snakes look to be heading back through, leave it open for now. It will give our people more time to get an accurate fix on our location."

I leaned forward resting my hands on my thighs, which reminded me how we must look almost as out of place with our seventeenth century garb as the snakes did. But since we didn't look ready to attack and eat anyone, no one for the moment was giving us a second glance.

Then I felt the hard lump of my iPhone under my right hand. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled it out and held it out in Connor's direction. "Here, you can just use my phone to call your people."

He started to reach for it and then dropped his hand with a chagrin expression. "You know, after a year stuck back in time I haven't the faintest idea what the number is anymore. I mean, you know how it is, you just type it into your phone once and then forget about it, as all you have to do is look up its name."

I nodded. I still remember the phone number we had when I was a kid, but now I didn't have the slightest idea what Bonnie's or Caroline's or even Jeremy's numbers were.

Just then I heard the first tell-tale warble of approaching British police vehicles, confirming we were in some large English city, hopefully London. I had already noticed the abandon cars all had steering wheels on the wrong side, but it was nice to have further confirmation. But then I remembered how British constables didn't carry guns. Not that it seemed like simple handguns would put much of a dent in the giant snakes angrily moving about in the street. Maybe even if they didn't carry guns, they would at least have some weapons in the trunks of their cars like American cops did in TV shows and movies.

"Okay," said Abby towards Bonnie. "You better close down the anomaly now, no point in letting a bunch of local police see it, too. It will be difficult enough to fabricate a cover story for the snakes without letting another group of highly credible witnesses see the anomaly also."

Bonnie nodded, straightened, raised her hands, and began an incantation. She continued chanting for nearly thirty seconds, but nothing seemed to be happening.

Pausing she said, "Rachel, I'm going to need your help again."

The other witch, who had been standing with her arms wrapped tightly about her mother, nodded, stepped over and clasped Bonnie's hand, and then began immediately to chant in unison in the same, almost eerie way they had done before. They chanted for thirty seconds before faltering to a halt. The anomaly in the middle of the street continued to spin and glitter.

"The level of available magic here isn't high enough. I can't close the anomaly," said Bonnie while shaking her head in an annoyed manner.

"It's okay," responded Connor while stretching out his hand to rest it briefly on her shoulder. "Our people can lock the anomaly until it closes on its own."

I wasn't certain if her inability to close the anomaly was the real cause of the expression on Bonnie's face. If she didn't have access to the power to close it, it also meant she didn't have access to the power to do all the impressive things she had done in Salem or back in the Cretaceous. Frankly, I was a little relieved she no longer had access to that much power. She had gotten completely out of control and definitely needed a break before she drifted over into some power-mad dark side like seemed to happen to every character with superpowers in books, TV, and the movies.

But then the implications of Bonnie losing most of her power occurred to me. If she couldn't close this anomaly, she probably couldn't open a new one either. If we had reached our desired destination, this was 2009 London. We were two years from our own time and had no way to open another doorway through time to get home. And we couldn't just hop a jet home because an earlier version of Bonnie, Caroline, and I were already there. Were we going to be stranded here for two years waiting for time to catch up with us?

As I continued to ponder our situation, my eyes drifted back to Lexi. Rachel was still talking with Bonnie, which was helping to distract her from what had to be the incredible strangeness of our current surroundings. But Lexi was standing slightly apart and her eyes were getting wilder and they continued to jump from one impossible object to another. How long would it take for her and Rachel to begin to cope with the last three hundred years of changes? I suddenly was starting to have second thoughts whether bringing them along had been such a bright idea.

I walked over and lightly rested my hands on Lexi's shoulders. "Welcome to our world. Sorry about the abrupt arrival and the lack of any warning as to what to expect."

She turned in my direction and stared at me with a fearful expression. Although her mouth was closed, I could still tell Lexi's fangs were extending. And I could see the black veins beginning to form around her eyes. Great. All we needed was a half-crazed vampire on the loose.

I ran my hand down her arm in what I hoped was a comforting manner. "Lexi, everything is going to be okay. I wouldn't have suggested you should come here, if things weren't going to be okay. Caroline is from here and she copes with being a vampire. My boyfriend is also a vampire. You can get along here, too. Try to stay calm."

She was just starting to nod and her face was returning to its normal, pale beautiful self when we were interrupted by a shout.

"Connor, Abby, it is so good to see you!"

I turned and saw a group of eight men in black commando gear climbing from a pair of black crew-cab pickups parked about a hundred feet down the broad sidewalk. Most of them were grinning like mad.

"Becker, you don't know how good it is to see you!" shouted Abby in return.

Then a pair of men in civilian attire climbed out of the third matching vehicle that had just pulled up behind the first two. These men had equally big smiles.

But I saw sudden looks of utter confusion on the faces of our two time-traveling companions, as Connor whispered 'Cutter?' at the same time as Abby said 'Stephen?'

**End of Chapter 10**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out at duaneaakre wordpress com

Have a great day!

Duane


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

The lead commando came running up. He spotted the giant snakes at almost the same moment he reached us. He quickly pulled Abby and Connor into a hug while at the same time asking, "How many snakes?"

"Just the two, Becker," replied Connor. As he was returning the hug, I could see his eyes remained fixed on the two still approaching men in civilian clothing, who were weighed down with large silver cases they had pulled from the bed of their truck.

Becker pulled back briefly and used hand gestures to direct his men. I was glad to see they were armed. I had never seen weapons quite like these before, but they were big, substantial, rifle-sized devices that simply looked a lot more powerful than handguns.

As I watched the men quickly and efficiently move to form a perimeter around the giant snakes, I heard Becker start to speak. From the tenor of his voice and his words, he had to be speaking to someone back at their base through the headset I saw all the commandos wearing.

"Jess, this is Becker. Abby and Connor have returned through this anomaly," he paused for a few seconds before continuing. "Yes, I said Abby and Connor. Ah, they have five others with them. Plus we have two giant prehistoric looking snakes about 1.5 meters in diameter by 17 meters in length. Please send a van for the people and a lorry for the snakes. Becker, out."

"Are any more snakes likely to come through before we get the anomaly locked?" asked Becker, still all business.

"No," replied Abby with a shake of her head. "The snakes are from the Paleocene Epoch, but this anomaly opens to 1692 Salem, Massachusetts. It's a long story. We'll explain later."

Becker nodded. "It is so good to have you back. We gave up all hope after the first year."

"How long have we been gone?" asked Connor in a surprisingly subdued tone. Then he appended, "And what is the date?"

"Two years," replied Becker.

I almost grinned. If we had overshot our destination by two years, this had to be 2011 instead of 2009. We weren't going to be stranded in London waiting to return to Mystic Falls. Then he continued speaking and my hopes were dashed.

"It is June 26, 2009."

"But that's not possible," stuttered Abby. "It was August 17, 2009 when we got trapped back in the Cretaceous."

"No," replied Becker, an uneasy expression starting to form on his handsome face. "It was September 6, 2007 when you disappeared through that anomaly."

Just then the two civilian men reached us. The older of the two, who looked fortyish with dark blond hair, dropped the heavy cases he had been lugging and swept Connor up in a hug. The younger man returned it so hard I thought he was going to crack a rib of the older man.

The younger civilian, who was taller and looked closer to thirty with a mop of thick brown hair, swept Abby up in his arms and then brusquely pulled her mouth to his. The kiss went on for several seconds and I could see fire in Connor's eyes. Connor and Abby had seemed like a couple ever since we had met them, was it really less than twenty-four hours earlier? But now I suddenly realized they might have only been a couple because of the circumstance of being stranded alone together back in the distant past. Of course, it was obvious from his expression Connor thought they were still a couple. I had this feeling things were about to become awkward at best or downright ugly, if we were unlucky.

"How is this possible?" asked Abby pulling back and then carefully extracting herself from the man's embrace. "Stephen, you were dead." She paused to glance over at the other civilian. "You and Cutter were both dead."

The three men from this present, Becker, Cutter, and Stephen all simply stared at her.

"Time ripple," said Connor in an almost dejected tone. He had looked so happy when the older man had first pulled him into the hug and I could understand it, if he thought these men had been dead but were now miraculously restored to life. But after the way Stephen and Abby had kissed, I wondered if he was quite as happy about it at this moment.

Should I admit I have always been more of a geek than most of my family and friends? Oh, I never belonged to the chess club or the computer club at school, but I liked to read. Perhaps that was why I had been so able to accept things when Stefan first told me he was a vampire and when Bonnie had demonstrated her witch abilities. And probably that was why I immediately grasped what Connor meant by a time ripple.

It was just like when Hermione had used the Time-Turner in _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban_ to go back and change events. Something in the past had changed and now Cutter and Stephen were alive when they hadn't been before and Abby and Connor had been lost in time in 2007 rather than 2009.

I wondered if it was related to the death of Reverend Cotton Mather back in Salem. If we hadn't shown up and the giant snakes hadn't shown up, he would have probably lived through the day and possibly have lived for many more years. Perhaps it was like that episode from the original _Star Trek_ series where the Enterprise was thrown back to the 1960's and they had to return the fighter pilot they transported aboard because his unborn son would do something important in the future. Was Cotton Mather supposed to live on and later in life father some children or do something else of consequence?

But in our own version of history, Bonnie knew several of her ancestors had escaped the witch trials in Salem to settle in Mystic Falls. If we hadn't rescued the twins from the gallows, then how would they have escaped? They certainly would have been dead within the next couple of minutes without our intervention.

Then the other change we had made to the past came to mind. We had brought Rachel and Lexi forward through time. I didn't see how that would have changed the twins escaping, but removing Lexi, who had lived for three hundred years all over the world, could possibly impact a lot of lives, if we weren't able to return her. It could certainly impact things in Mystic Falls and especially Stefan. What if she hadn't been around to change his life at the pivotal moments? Would Stefan have even returned to Mystic Falls in 2009 for me to meet him? And if he had returned in 2009 would he have been the kind, gentle soul I had come to love or _the Ripper_ from the stories Damon had told me about Stefan after he had left with Klaus?

Were my actions of bringing Rachel and Lexi forward in time responsible for everything?

**End of Chapter 11**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out duaneaakre wordpress com

Have a great day!

Duane


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

At the moment I couldn't see anything useful I could do to determine if bringing Lexi and Rachel forward in time had caused the changes we had discovered. These people from Connor and Abby's organization must have felt the same about the revelation that Connor and Abby hadn't returned to the same version of the present from which they had left. So everyone turned their attention to dealing with the giant snakes and locking the anomaly.

I watched as the commandos started using their weapons on the pair of snakes. They didn't fire projectiles like normal guns, but instead seemed to fire pulses of electricity. Oh, they didn't display bolts of lightning like Bonnie had done back in Salem, but from the way the snakes' bodies were jerking and vibrating, it looked like they were receiving electrical shocks. Within a couple of minutes they had used the electric shocks to herd them onto the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. Then they must have increased the intensity, because the snakes were abruptly motionless. From across the wide street it wasn't apparent whether the snakes were dead or merely unconscious, but I felt no inclination to walk over there to find out for sure. No, I was more than happy to leave the snakes to the military types.

But I was intrigued by the weapons. I wondered if they would be equally effective against vampires. I had driven a knife coated with white oak ash through Elijah's heart and had used wooden stakes on several other vampires, but it always required getting dangerously close to them. Things would be a lot easier, if I had a weapon that could incapacitate them from a distance before staking them. For a moment I fantasized about using one of these guns on Klaus and watching him lying helplessly on the ground, his body involuntarily jerking and twisting.

But then I remembered how this version of 2009 was different for Abby and Connor's friends. Would it be the same in Mystic Falls? Would Stefan, Damon, and Klaus even be there?

Until I had more information, it was pointless to speculate and I forced my attention back to the current situation. These peoples' weapons might be useful in my old life and maybe other things they had would be useful, too. If we were going to get home anytime soon and get our old lives back, I needed to learn everything I could.

So once the snakes were out of the way, I turned my attention to Cutter and Stephen, who had carried their large cases out into the street. Quickly, as though they had done it many times before, they unpacked these projector-looking things and placed them at the four cardinal points around the anomaly, but about twenty-five feet back. Then Cutter pulled out a laptop and spent a couple of minutes typing and looking at the screen. Finally, everything must have been properly adjusted, as abruptly the anomaly collapsed into a tiny sphere about eight inches across. He continued to study the computer's screen for a couple of minutes before nodding his head in satisfaction.

While several of the commandos kept an eye on the snakes, Becker directed the others to deal with the police and help with crowd control, as people had begun filtering back into the area.

Becker was just turning back to us, as Cutter and Stephen walked up.

I turned and looked at our little group now that the excitement seemed to be over. Lexi had joined Rachel in standing by Bonnie. Caroline was standing by me. Abby and Connor were standing together and I could see their fingers were intertwined. I wasn't certain if that meant Abby had decided she was with Connor or if they had been trapped together for so long, it was simple force of habit. Only time would tell.

"Dibs on Becker," whispered Caroline as she leaned close to my ear.

I raised an eyebrow in her direction.

"If we end up stuck here for two years, well, a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do."

Obviously, Caroline's thoughts had been running in the same direction as mine. Oh, not about Becker, I had no interest in hooking up with anyone here in London. I still loved Stefan and could force myself to wait until I saw him again, even if it ended up being an excruciatingly long wait. No, it was that she must have reached the same conclusion after Bonnie had been unable to close the anomaly that we might be stuck here with no way home except living through the next two years.

"I don't know about Abby, but I think Connor would appreciate it if you went after Stephen instead," I whispered back.

I watched as Caroline tilted her head to one side and took a slow, leisurely scan up and down Stephen's body. With the body armor Becker was wearing, it was hard to be certain, but I think Stephen's body was almost as muscular. And both Stephen and Becker stood a good six foot one, at least four inches taller than Caroline.

Caroline turned back to me and threw a quick wink before leaning in close. "I could do that."

"How about giving it a few hours to see what the situation here really looks like before making your move?" I suggested.

The tall vampire shrugged. "Okay. I'm good for at least another day before I have to feed."

She must have seen something in my expression for she quickly added. "Do you think they have an infirmary with a blood bank they might be willing to share? Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't want them to know about my and Lexi's situation and I would just feed in the wild. But they might frown if they discovered in the wrong way. Since Abby and Connor know, they might feel compelled to share their knowledge. And I certainly don't want to end up in some cage. Do you think Lexi and I should disappear until you and Bonnie can figure out the situation?"

Our hushed conversation had suddenly taken an unexpected turn from the topic of which guy she should hit on. And I wondered if she was right. From what Connor and Abby had said, they tried to capture the creatures alive. When possible, they returned them through the anomalies to their own times. But when anomalies closed too soon, they held the creatures for study. Would they want to do the same, if they discovered a pair of vampires in their midst?

I stared around at these people. Abby and Connor had seemed to accept the existence of vampires and witches, but they had been lost in time and needed any allies they could find. But things might be different now that they were back in some version of their present.

"Perhaps it would be best if you make yourselves scarce for the moment. Watch for me . . . say . . . in front of Buckingham Palace between noon and 2 P.M. for the next few days. Once I have a better handle on things, I'll tell them I want to do a little sightseeing. Try to make some discreet inquiries into things back home in the meantime and I'll do the same. And keep an eye on Lexi. We don't need her leaving a trail of corpses across London."

Caroline nodded and then nonchalantly made her way over to the others. To give her time to clue the others in before she and Lexi made their departure, I moved over to where Abby and Connor were now talking to the three men from the present.

"Hi, we haven't been introduced. I'm Elena Gilbert. You will have to forgive my appearance, but this outfit was all the rage back in 1692 Salem. But I am certainly ready to change into something a little more comfortable on this beautiful summer day. Are low slung jeans and short tee shirts that show off a little skin appropriate attire in this version of the timeline?"

I toyed with the idea about throwing in an additional comment about hating to wear bras, but decided it wasn't necessary. I was covered from head to foot in a heavy black dress, but I already had the undivided attention of all four guys. Abby was looking at me a little strangely, but I only needed to hold their attention for a couple of minutes.

"Where exactly are you from Elena?" asked Stephen and somehow I just knew he was the real player of these men. "You don't sound like you are from the distant past."

"I'm from the future - 2011 to be exact. And after spending a day in Salem, where everyone dresses like this and they are busy hanging people for being witches, I am so ready to go home. This isn't exactly America, but at least it is close."

"If it wasn't for Elena and her friends, we would still be stuck back in the Cretaceous Era," interjected Connor.

"I think standing out here in public is not the best place to be holding this conversation," stated Becker. "And Lester is going to want to be debriefed. Let's wait until we get back to the ARC, so we only have to go through things once."

I saw out of the corner of my eye that Caroline and Lexi had just blurred and disappeared.

"Okay," I said. "Could we get something to eat while we wait for our ride? I haven't really eaten in about," I paused to tick off the hours since we had had dinner in Moscow on our drive out to the lake house. Once split five ways, the meager amount of food Lexi had been able to provide at the cabin the previous evening combined with what we had salvaged from the Porsche hadn't been enough to truly qualify as a meal. "In about eighteen hours."

"Me, too," chimed in Connor. "I have been eating almost nothing but roots and berries for almost a year. I would kill for some real food."

Becker glanced around. "I think the next building down has a takeout place. Our ride should be here soon and that will have to hold you for the moment."

"Lead the way, ah, Becker is it?" I asked.

"Captain Hilary Becker, at your service, mum," he said while offering his hand.

"Hilary?" said Connor with almost a twitter in his voice. "I had no idea that was your Christian name. Hell, I didn't think you even had a first name."

I watched as an annoyed expression rolled briefly across Becker's face. But he must have been teased about his name plenty of times before, as he just shook his head and started leading our little party down the street.

Abby quietly stepped up beside me as we began to walk. "Where did Caroline and Lexi disappear to? I saw Caroline talking to you and then she went and spoke to the others before the two of them simply vanished. Becker is pretty observant. He is going to notice soon how our group has shrunk by two."

I shrugged. "We weren't certain what kind of a reception they were going to get with their special gifts and needs. So it seemed like a good idea if they disappeared for the present. If I feel convinced your people aren't going to try to put them into a cage, or worse, I'll let them know it is okay to return."

"You're probably right. I'm not certain how things stand here either, when people I know are dead are suddenly walking around perfectly fine. For the moment it might be best to keep this aspect of things a secret. I'll try to clue Connor in, but he sometimes speaks without thinking."

I nodded; glad at least for the present that Abby seemed to be on our side.

**End of Chapter 12**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out my blog at: duaneaakre (dot) wordpress (dot) com

Have a great day!

Duane


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

I had heard the British expression 'fish and chips' a million times in books and TV, but had always pictured the chips to mean potato chips, not French Fries. However I had been so hungry, I had wolfed my helping straight down. I think Connor managed three servings before our ride showed up.

I was still licking my fingers when we boarded the van. I slid into the seat next to Abby. Connor gave me a dirty look when he was the last one to enter, but I'm sure he was happier it was me sitting next to Abby than Stephen.

"So what's the story with you and Stephen?" I asked at just more than a whisper.

Abby turned and looked at me. She glanced to where Connor was sitting by himself two rows further back. Stephen was riding back to their base with Cutter in the truck.

"I have no idea, and that's more than a little scary."

I gave a small nod and then waited patiently for her to continue.

"When I first met him, I had a bit of a crush. I flirted a little, but that's all. I never even kissed him before, for god's sake. So I was as surprised as anyone when he lifted me into his arms and started snogging."

"So, not only is he suddenly not dead in this version of 2009, but you and he might have been involved," I mused.

"Yeah, and that's why it is more than a little scary. I have no idea what the situation is here."

"What about Connor? You've been together for a year."

"I know. Connor is like my best friend and I don't know how I would have survived a year trapped back there without him. And even before that, he had been staying in the guest room at my flat for several months."

"So you never did_ it_ until you were back in the Cretaceous?"

I saw something flit through Abby's eyes, perhaps a hint of disappointment or something.

"We never did_ it_ back there either," she responded with sadness. "Oh, we did pretty much everything else; I think it was the only way to retain our sanity in an utterly hopeless situation. But we could never go the whole way. I mean, when we first went through that anomaly we only expected to be there an hour, not a year. I certainly wasn't carrying a year's worth of birth control pills nor Connor a huge stash of rubbers. We both knew if I got pregnant, that would be the end. No way could the two of us survive alone, when I was eight or nine months gone and would barely be able to waddle."

I tried to imagine being trapped somewhere with Stefan for a year, but unable to make love. I don't think I would have that much willpower. But then, unlike Abby and Connor who had never made love before, I knew what sex with Stefan was like and it was utterly unbelievable. No way could I be around him twenty-four/seven and keep myself from doing it. I would be a wreck within a week. Even just thinking about it was starting to get me all hot and bothered.

With an effort I forced myself to start listening to Abby again.

"And that is why I was so relieved when we found you, Bonnie, and Caroline, even though the anomaly you had come through was already closed. With four girls we could probably have risked letting one of us at a time be pregnant."

I couldn't help shooting a glance over my shoulder at Connor, who was staring listlessly out the side window at the passing traffic. What if we had been trapped back there forever? Could I have been part of what effectively would have been a group marriage? Could I have made love to, had children by this man? It was something that had never crossed my mind before, but now I couldn't shake the idea. And certainly the elevated arousal I had experienced back there due to the altered atmosphere wouldn't have hurt.

"You would have shared him with us?" I asked as I turned back.

"Yeah, although we really would have needed a second man to set up a viable civilization and even then we would have needed to carefully control who had offspring with whom for several generations to maximize the gene pool. Unfortunately, with only one male, it would never have worked for more than a couple of generations."

"You seemed to have thought about this a lot."

Abby shrugged. "I'm a biologist by training. Oh, I specialized in reptiles, but the basic concepts are the same whether you are talking humans, reptiles, or giant dinosaurs."

"So, were you recruited into this whole anti-anomaly group because of your background as a biologist?"

"Sort of. Actually, I have been involved from the very beginning – before there was a government backed organization and before we even knew about anomalies. I was working at a zoo at the time. Someone reported a large wild animal in the woodlands nearby and several local dogs and cats had gone missing in the village along its edge. It was reported to the authorities and one copy ended up with my boss.

"You wouldn't believe the number of inappropriate animals people try to keep as pets and which then are let loose when they become too much to handle. I was always being sent to round up things like pumas, wolves, giant snakes . . . okay not giant snakes like today, but large boa constrictors . . . and take them back to the zoo until they could be appropriately handled. So I thought it was just going to be a case like that.

"So that night, while searching out in the woods, I ran into Cutter, Stephen, and Connor for the first time. They were independently searching for the creature. When we finally found it, the creature turned out to be a Scutosaurus, which is really large, but fortunately an herbivore. In no way were we ready to deal that first day with some of the truly vicious, dangerous creatures we have come across since then."

Abby continued to tell me about the early days of their dealings with the anomalies before the ARC project was formally established. And before I realized it, we were pulling into a large underground parking structure located below a sprawling five-story tall glass and steel building. Whatever I might have thought before, this ARC project was definitely not a shoestring operation.

As we climbed out of the van, my thoughts had drifted back to Abby's comments about the group of us being permanently stranded back in the Cretaceous. I knew I was fantasizing about it more than I should. And in my daydream, a human version of Stefan had been added to the mix. Four hot girls and two hot guys stranded forever in a world apart – a world that didn't include vampires, Originals, werewolves, or witches. Even if that world did include killer dinosaurs, it in some ways sounded better than my real life in Mystic Falls.

**End of Chapter 13**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out duaneaakre wordpress com

Have a great day!

Duane


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

I slid into one of the chairs around the table in the conference room. My hair was damp against the back of my neck, but this time damp in a pleasant way, not due to high humidity like back in the Cretaceous. No, this time it was damp from a delicious shower. After hours in the age of dinosaurs battling velociraptors and T. Rexes and then battling giant snakes in Salem, I was filthy and my body reeked. Oh, I hadn't been anywhere near as bad as Connor and Abby, but by my personal hygiene standards, I had looked and felt disgusting.

So it was once again wonderful to have a clean body and clean clothes. Apparently lots of times after field missions, people here needed to clean up, so the place had a decent set of locker rooms. And Abby had been able to scrounge Bonnie, Rachel, and me some clean clothes. The jeans weren't a perfect fit, but good enough. And Abby's clothes, even though they were her own, weren't a perfect fit for her either. Apparently, a year in the Cretaceous had burned off what little body fat she had once sported. And from what I saw in the changing room, she was now rocking a serious six-pack. Perhaps if the ARC ever needs to raise money, they should sell weight-loss package tours to the time of dinosaurs!

After hours in a heavy, scratchy wool dress, it was nice to be back in my more customary attire of jeans and tee shirt. Even though they were a little worse for wear and tear, I was still wearing my own Converse Hightops. Abby hadn't been able to find any better alternatives that were nearly as comfortable.

Unfortunately, Rachel wasn't nearly as happy. It had taken a lot of discussion and almost a demonstration to get across the concept of modern showers. Then there had been the whole issue with clothes. She had spent her entire life wearing and being around people who wore bulky, floor-length dresses. Even though she had seen us the previous evening in the almost dark cabin in more or less similar attire, now in the well-lit locker room, Rachel was absolutely scandalized to see Abby and me in jeans and then even more so when Bonnie appeared in a skirt so short its lower edge was definitely a good nine inches above her knees. Abby eventually found a black skirt that extended slightly below Rachel's knees and a dark colored blouse and sweater. I guess it was a good thing Rachel was super-skinny and flat as a rail so we didn't have to deal with the whole issue of finding and instructing her in the use of a modern bra. But after the ordeal of cleaning and dressing Rachel, I had the sudden urge to take her to one of our summer parties out at the lake house. If she was shocked by our current attire, I got an almost perverse thrill imagining her expression at seeing some of our itsy-bitsy bikinis.

But as much as I felt better in some clean modern clothing, it was nothing like the improvement I saw when Connor walked into the conference room. Some men should never try to grow a beard and Connor was definitely one of them. After a year in the Cretaceous he had had the most straggly, unkempt beard I had ever seen – in real life or the movies. So the change in the newly shaven Connor was startling. He actually was more than just kind of cute now. I would say he was borderline hot, well not Salvatore hot, but still hot.

The remains of our little group, Connor, Abby, Rachel, Bonnie and me, plus Cutter, Stephen, and Becker were already in the conference room when a middle-aged man, who could have had the word 'bureaucrat' stamped on his forehead, swept into the room with a pretty, young woman in tow.

The girl headed over to a computer console in the corner of the room, but along the way shot a quick glance in Becker's direction. I saw Becker's lips quirk into a brief smile before the military man's normally taciturn expression reappeared. Definitely, at least a budding relationship existed between these two. If Caroline eventually rejoined us, I would have to warn her away from Becker.

The bureaucrat, who had to be the James Lester that Connor and Abby had told us about, strode to the head of the conference table. He had just opened his mouth to speak when the conference room door opened again and an attractive woman of about thirty darted in.

"Sorry I'm late, sir. I was still dealing with the aftermath of the situation down in the financial district from today's anomaly. I don't know how many more times we can use the _studios shooting a movie_ cover story. This makes the third time in the last five weeks. We have already had to read in more people than I like at Scotland Yard and I am still getting a nearly endless stream of queries from them."

"Right, right, let's go to my office after the meeting and see what else we can come up with. Certainly, we have a lot of creative people on staff here. Maybe we should run some internal contest for new ideas for cover stories with some kind of prizes for the best suggestions."

"I sort of like 'My dinosaur ate my homework'," muttered Connor in a stage whisper. I couldn't help but laugh, as Lester shot him a shriveling glare.

"Ms. Maitland, Mr. Temple, it is good to have you back, even if I see your time away has done nothing to improve your juvenile sense of humor," Lester said by way of greeting to the pair. "And don't be expecting a pay voucher for all the time you were gone."

"Of course not, Mister Lester," said Abby with a straight face. "We wouldn't dream of benefitting financially from the year we spent trapped on an officially sanctioned mission, sir."

"Oh, all right," responded Lester sounding slightly flustered. "I can't cover your whole time, but I'll talk to the Minister and see what I can do. And you can use the company's flat until you sort out new living arrangements."

At a small nod from Abby, the man turned his gaze in our direction.

"And our guests are?" he asked.

He was looking in my direction, but it wasn't clear who he was expecting to respond. I was sure at least a brief overview had already been forwarded to him. But I decided I might as well be the one to reply.

"I'm Elena Gilbert and this is my best friend Bonnie Bennett. We are from the year 2011. And this is Rachel Branson; she's from 1692. We just met her yesterday. We were in the middle of a difficult situation back in Salem, I'm sure you heard about the giant snakes, and the only way to escape was to have her accompany us through the anomaly.

"Our story really begins roughly twenty-four hours ago back in Virginia when Bonnie and I were driving out to my family's lake house for the weekend. That's when one of these things you people call _an anomaly_ appeared right in front of us. We passed through and suddenly we were somewhere else. As soon as we got out of the car to figure out where we were and what had happened, this giant T. Rex appeared and trashed our car."

Deciding to go with the same approach that Abby had used, I looked Lester straight in the eye. "It wasn't actually my car, sir, but my boyfriend's. And he is so going to kill me. Could you help with a replacement, please? It was a 1962 Porsche 356B. Oh, and it was red and in cherry condition - at least until the dinosaur got ahold of it."

Lester actually appeared to physically shudder for ten seconds before responding.

"The ARC is not a charity organization or an insurance company. We are not going to reimburse everyone whose property is damaged by dinosaurs. And we are certainly not going to do it for bloody Americans. It sounds like the anomaly you are talking about opened on American soil, so petition your own government."

"Okay, do you have the phone number for someone at the American equivalent to the ARC that I can contact?"

"No, I bloody well do not!" he responded with his voice no longer quite achieving that infamous British stiff upper lip.

"I didn't even know the Americans had an ARC project," stated Connor.

"I don't know either," exclaimed Lester. "But as people keep reminding me, Britain is almost a third tier power these days. If we have an ARC program, I would certainly think the world's only superpower would also have one. Don't you?"

"Well, aside from that," I interjected trying to get the conversation headed in a more productive direction. "We have other bigger, more pressing concerns. As I said, we are from the year 2011. Younger versions of ourselves already exist back home. So we can hardly just hop a jet and go there. I mean, you seem to be trying pretty hard to keep all this under wraps. How will it help if there are suddenly two Elena Gilberts running around?"

Of course, if you counted Katherine, who was my identical twin, two Elena Gilberts were sort of already running around, but I was hardly going to tell Lester that.

"So what do we do for the next two years until we can return sometime after we disappeared into the past? I mean I can't just move into a hotel and charge it on my credit card, someone back home would wonder why my card was being used in London."

Lester was staring at me, but before he could reply, the young woman sitting at the computer in the corner swiveled in my direction.

"I think you may have an even bigger problem. Oh, by the way, I'm Jess Parker."

"Hi, Jess. So what's this new problem?" I asked.

She hit a button on the small control panel next to the computer and a large wall-mounted screen flared to life. On it was an entry from the Mystic Falls Daily's website. The first thing that registered were photos of my parents and myself. Then I read the headline dated May 24, 2009 – _Three Local Residents Die in Car Crash_.

**End of Chapter 14**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out duaneaakre word press com

Have a great day!

Duane


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

**Part 1**

I had been in the car with my parents on May 23, 2009 when it had plunged off the Wickery Bridge and into the river. Stefan had been nearby and dove into the river. He only had time to save one of us from drowning and my father had insisted it be me.

Now, if the headline was to be believed, in this version of the timeline Stefan hadn't saved me and I was dead. Dead and buried in Mystic Falls. There would be no going home for me.

I felt my eyes tearing up. Oh, not because I was dead in this timeline, but because if I had arrived here in 2009 only a little over a month earlier, I might have been able to prevent the accident and my parents might still be alive. And I would give almost anything to have my parents back.

And this was confirmation that what we had done back in Salem had not only changed things here in England such that Cutter and Stephen were still alive, but also back home. Stefan had not been in Mystic Falls. Did that mean that Lexi had never saved him in the past by helping him shake his blood addiction and he was still some version of _The Ripper_? How many other things had changed?

Bonnie reached over and rested her hand on my arm. "Elena, everything is going to be alright. We'll fix things."

"How?" I asked almost bitterly while fighting back tears. "We're stranded here in London. Stefan never saved me after the accident and could be God knows where. And what other things have changed that we don't even know about yet? How are we going to _fix_ things?"

"I don't know yet, Elena, but we'll figure out a way. If history can be changed once, it can be changed twice."

"What are you talking about?" interjected Lester. "I can't have a pair of school girls talking about changing history. If a committee of highly trained scholars with a proposal 10,000 pages thick quantifying every possible risk asked me to change history, I would give them an emphatic 'No'. Therefore I certainly won't tolerate it from a couple of teenagers. If I let every Tom, Dick, and Harry try to change the past, we would have utter chaos."

"Let's everyone calm down," said Cutter speaking up for the first time. "We don't even know how the past was changed or how to do it again. Or undo it and return to the version you knew before. And since I was apparently dead in the previous version, I think you can understand why I have some reluctance to head in that direction."

He definitely had a point. If we returned things to the way they were it would cost people who were sitting in this very room. Still, I wanted Stefan back, and, if I could manage it, my parents, too.

"I believe I know what caused all the changes," I said as calmly as I could to keep the situation from exploding again. "It was things we did while we were back in 1692 Salem. I suspect the principal thing was bringing Rachel's mother, Lexi, forward through time. She will touch many peoples' lives down through the next three centuries. I assumed when she had finished the task I wanted her to do here, I could just send her back to 1692 and everything would proceed down the pre-ordained path, but I guess that isn't the case."

"How exactly did you intend to open another anomaly back to 1692 Salem?" asked Cutter. "So far the anomalies all appear to open randomly between different times and places."

"Bonnie can open anomalies between any places and times she wants or at least she could when she was in the past. How do you think we got from the Cretaceous period to Salem and then on to here in less than a day?" I responded.

"Miss Bennett, how can you possibly open anomalies?" asked Cutter.

Bonnie looked at me and I nodded.

"I'm a witch."

"A witch? Really?" scoffed Stephen.

A small stack of papers were sitting on the conference table directly in front of where Lester was standing. Abruptly, they burst into flames.

"I don't understand why, but in the present I can do little more than simple parlor tricks with just my mind. I can do more with the aid of my Grimoire and potions and talisman and other things, but back in time my abilities increased a thousand-fold and things like opening anomalies were within my grasp."

As Cutter grabbed a trash can and slid the burning papers into it, Connor added. "You should have seen her back in Salem. She was shooting these massive lightning bolts out of her hands like some super-powered comic book character. It was awesome! And I just missed seeing it in person, but back in the Cretaceous she ripped twenty Sequoia-sized trees out of the ground and tossed them further than I could see."

Then he pulled the small stone from his pocket. "And she enchanted these pebbles to work as universal translators. We were only using them to talk more easily with Lexi and Rachel because of their arcane version of old English. But after I showered, I tried it with Sarah Page. I had her speak in ancient Egyptian and I could understand it. Do you realize how having access to these stones could potentially aid our work?"

When Connor finally ran down, I noticed a speculative expression on Cutter's face just before he began to speak.

"James, since these girls are more or less stuck for what to do or where to go at the moment, how about finding them temporary positions here with ARC? I would like to do some tests of Miss Bennett's abilities, if she is willing, and we could carry her on the books as one of my assistants. I'm sure we could find something for Miss Gilbert. And I can already think of the names of several anthropologists on staff who would give their right arms to hear Miss Branson's firsthand accounts of life in the seventeenth century."

Lester slowly nodded. "What's that old saying? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?"

"Mr. Lester," I retorted. "I don't think I appreciate that analogy. We are not your enemy. We never volunteered to get sucked into this world of anomalies, but we are stuck with it nevertheless. We are just trying to make the best of a difficult situation. And maybe, just maybe, if we work together we can figure out a way to get our lives back, or at least something close to our old lives."

"Perhaps you could explain why two of your acquaintances disappeared almost as soon as you arrived via the anomaly and before we had a chance to interview them?" asked Lester. "If you are not our enemy, you, at a minimum, seem to have some secret agenda you're not sharing with us."

Perhaps Lester wasn't as stupid as his clothing made him appear. I mean, who wears a lavender shirt with white collars and cuffs, a way too flamboyant tie, and a heavily pin-striped suit? He looked like a cross between a character in a bad gangster movie and an extra from one of the old Austin Powers movies. Was that the_ style_ of this current version of the timeline? Or did he simply have extremely bad taste in clothes? He would have looked so much better in a simple gray or black suit with a white shirt and a more subdued tie.

But instead of worrying about his clothes at the moment, I needed to decide what to say about Caroline and Lexi.

**Part 2**

Sometimes honesty is the best policy, so I jumped straight in with both feet.

"Caroline, who is from my time, and Lexi, who is from 1692, are both vampires. I've seen several of the old British 'Dracula' films and didn't want anyone here deciding to play Peter Cushing and attempt to stake one of my friends."

Connor was the only one who grinned in reply to my comment, but then he did seem the most likely one present to have a love for the classic Hammer productions. I, of course, had watched a lot of old vampire movies since meeting Stefan. Some we had watched together and laughed at what the writers had gotten right and wrong. And some I had watched alone when I was trying to figure out what made Stefan tick.

"Vampires and witches," replied Cutter with a shake of his head. "The timeline you are from sounds surprisingly different. When the only change I knew about was Stephen and me being dead in that version, I never would have guessed they would be so divergent."

I stared at him as the implications of what he just said sank in. What if there weren't vampires or witches or werewolves in this version of the timeline? It would explain why Stefan hadn't saved me during the car crash. It wasn't because he was off on some perpetual _blood lust_ driven bender. Maybe it was because he had never been turned and had died as a normal human somewhere back in the nineteenth century or the early twentieth century.

But magic was possible here; I had seen Bonnie light a fire with her mind only minutes ago. Of course, since she had been _downtime_ when the time ripple occurred, that might explain how a witch could still exist. And the same was true for Caroline and Lexi.

After the last couple of years living in Mystic Falls, vampires and witches had started to seem perfectly normal to me. But for a moment I wondered how different my life would be in a world without supernatural creatures. What if I had met the original pre-vampire version of Stefan? It seems like our lives would have been so much easier and happier.

Then I shook my head. If all the changes were a result of our actions back in 1692, it wouldn't explain a complete absence of witches and vampires today. The Originals had been around long before then and vampires had to have been scattered all over the world. I couldn't imagine how simply bringing Lexi and Rachel forward in time would have wiped them all out. It had to be the fact that ninety-nine point nine percent of humans were completely unaware of the existence of supernatural creatures and these people simply fell in that large group. And as much as I loved Stefan, plenty of times in the last two years I had wished I was back in that blissfully ignorant majority.

"Witches and vampires were extremely rare in the previous timeline where we are from and I think it is the same thing here," I said in reply to Cutter's comment. "They generally keep a very low profile, so they could be among you without you ever being aware of it."

"So are real vampires like those in all the books and stories?" asked Jess with a glint in her eyes. "You know, all hot and sexy?"

I saw the shadow of a frown cross Becker's face at her remark. It was obvious he didn't relish the thought of Jess being interested in anyone else, particularly potentially smoldering hot vampires. And at the thought of smoldering hot vampires, Damon jumped to mind. Oh, don't get me wrong, Stefan was at least equally as hot, but most of the time he kept the full brunt of his vampiric charisma in check. But Damon was his exact opposite. He was always on the prowl for his next victim and I could picture him cranking up the charm if he were ever to meet Jess. Damon definitely was the prototypical vampire from the romance novels who could sweep women off their feet and strike terror in the hearts of the stoutest men. Damon would be Becker's ultimate nightmare.

"Mystic Falls, my hometown, seemed to be a nexus for vampires. I have met at least a dozen and, yes, they have all been hot and sexy with screaming hard bodies and the ability to make you want to simply melt. But they can be cruel, vicious killers, too, who would drain you of blood and then toss away your lifeless body without a second glance," I paused to finger the necklace Stefan had given me what felt like a lifetime ago. "They also have the ability to compel you to do whatever they want by simply looking into your eyes. One of the few things that will hurt them and the only thing I know that will nullify their ability to compel is vervain. I don't know if it grows here, but it is a plant that grows in the wild in Virginia. Carrying some of it with you or drinking its extract are the only things that will prevent them from taking control of your mind."

"So you have some on you?" asked Jess. Her eyes weren't completely readable, but I saw a drop of perspiration trickling down her temple and it wasn't that hot in the conference room.

"Always."

Her eyes moved to Bonnie. "You, too?"

Bonnie shook her head while displaying an evil little grin. "I may not have the full abilities here that I have in the past, but I can still reach into a vampire's mind and cause them enough pain to incapacitate them. I've been told it feels like I have jammed a white-hot knife into their brain and then started swirling it around. And that ability works on werewolves, too."

"Werewolves?" echoed Lester before pulling out a chair and slouching into it.

From what Connor and Abby had told me, they had dealt with a lot of creatures that were scarier and more deadly than vampires or werewolves, so I didn't understand why this latest revelation would cause such a strong reaction from the middle-aged man. Maybe it was because these creatures they had been battling were from somewhere else and not living among them. Or maybe he had had an encounter with one somewhere in his past, but had never understood what it really was.

"Perhaps you are beginning to grasp why we felt it was best if Caroline and Lexi didn't join us here," I said quietly. "I've known Caroline since we were both little kids. She can control herself and wouldn't do anything unless she feels trapped and cornered. However, I've known Lexi for less than a day and I'm not one hundred percent ready to vouch for her behavior yet."

"But you think it is okay to simply let them run wild in London while they do who knows what?" demanded Becker.

I wondered how much of his question was prompted by his concern for the public welfare and how much of it was due to Jess' earlier comments.

After thinking about it for a minute I shrugged. "Caroline isn't going to be leaving a trail of bloodless bodies across the city. Most likely, she will simply compel someone who works in a hospital to raid their blood bank and bring her a cooler filled with blood bags. Oh, Caroline is not above drinking it fresh, but she can always find willing partners and she wouldn't take enough to kill them. And she would compel them to forget it had ever happened. I know a vampire had been feeding on her for months before she was turned and she was never aware."

"Is it easy to be turned?" asked Jess almost eagerly.

I thought back to my biological mother, Isobel. She, too, had desired to become a vampire and look where it had gotten her. She had wanted to be immortal and yet she had been dead before reaching thirty-five. She would have lived a lot longer and been a lot happier if she had remained human.

And while she put up a brave front, I knew Caroline would switch back to human in a heartbeat, if it miraculously became possible. I think Lexi would, too. Of all the vampires I had met, Klaus was the only one who I think would not switch back if given the choice. And perhaps that was the reason he was the one who most needed destroying.

"It takes a conscious effort on the vampire's part and usually the human's, too. Everyone who is bitten doesn't change or the world would be quickly overrun," I said in reply to her question. Then I looked her straight in the eye. "Being a vampire is not as wonderful or glamorous as it sounds. Of the vampires I have met, almost all of them would choose to be human, if it were possible."

Abruptly, Lester straightened up in his chair. "This is all fascinating information, but we all have work we should be doing. And I have a teleconference with the Minister in thirty minutes and I will need a few minutes to get my thoughts organized. So let's wrap this up for now."

Then he turned in my direction. "I agree it is probably best if your other, ah, friends remain in the city until I have a little more time to consider the situation."

"Sir," interrupted Stephen. "If Nick is going to be doing some research into Bonnie's abilities, I wouldn't mind doing a little research into the vampires' abilities, if they are willing. Perhaps it will lead to something that will be useful in dealing with some of the creatures that come through the anomalies."

Lester gave a distracted nod and then Stephen turned in my direction. I wasn't certain of Stephen's agenda, but Caroline was a big girl and perfectly capable of looking after herself. So I nodded in turn. "I made arrangements to meet Caroline later. You are welcome to come along and make your case."

Stephen nodded and then flashed a small smile. He definitely had more on his mind then what he had said. I was sure we would discover what in good time.

And I had my own agenda. I strongly suspected Lester wasn't going to let Bonnie or Rachel anywhere near an anomaly until we had garnered his trust. They were the ones who could open new anomalies and had the greatest potential of changing the past, if they could get there. But, at least in the near term, I doubted he had the same level of concern about me. And he would probably be right. If I went through an anomaly and ended up somewhere in the distant past, I would be stranded there just like Connor and Abby had been. But when the day came for us to make our move, I wanted to be ready. And by being ready I meant having access to and being proficient with weapons that could take down a vampire. The weapons the commandos had used on the giant snakes looked like the best option. So it was simply necessary to get access to them.

"Mister Lester," I began. "It sounds like Bonnie can help Cutter with his research. Rachel can work with the anthropologists. If she is interested, Caroline can help Stephen with his research projects. But that sort of leaves me twiddling my thumbs. I don't have the math or science background to help Connor or Cutter with their research into how the anomalies work or how to predict when and where they will open. And, frankly, I'm not that interested in helping Abby and the other biologists who are doing research into the creatures you are holding here. I mean, spend my days cleaning up dinosaur pooh? Yuck!

"Anyway, I was wondering, could I work with Becker and his men? I may not be as big as them, but I have been training in kickboxing ever since getting sucked into the world of vampires and werewolves. Besides, it sounds like your people generally don't take down most creatures via one-on-one combat, but use weapons instead. And, well, in the last couple of years I have been through a lot of situations that would send hardened men running and screaming for the hills, so I know I am good at coping with unusual, scary situations."

When I finished speaking, Lester turned his gaze towards Becker, so I did, too. As I turned, I caught Jess' face out of the corner of my eye. She suddenly didn't look happy, perhaps thinking I intended to encroach on her guy. That certainly wasn't my intent and I would need to find an opportunity to make that clear to the other woman. Then Becker began to speak and I had to force my attention on to him.

He must have had the same thought, because his eyes flicked thoughtfully between Jess and me. "You are right about most creatures that come through the anomalies. Unless they are utterly benign, we use our weapons to take them down, so size and combat skills don't really matter. However, many times we have had to deal with panicking civilians and we can't just shoot them. So some training to quickly immobilize crazed people is useful. How about this, let's go down to the gym for a quick sparring session. If you do okay, I'll consider working with you. Since all the guys on my team had at least eight years of Special Forces training before they were recruited, it hardly seems fair to pit you against one of them on your first day."

He paused and glanced over at Jess. "I've been giving Jess a little self-defense training on the side. Her job is mainly back here at the ARC where it is supposed to be safe, but she has gotten caught out in the field on more than one occasion and I thought she needed to be prepared for an emergency. So, if she is willing, I thought perhaps the pair of you could spar. You're of similar sizes and I know her abilities and limitations which will help me judge yours."

I turned to look at Jess and she gave a quick nod. I couldn't help but see the almost feral gleam in her eyes. She thought I was making a play for her guy and she intended to put me in my place. For a second I almost wished I was going to have to spar with the much bigger Becker. He, at least, wouldn't be intentionally trying to do me bodily harm. How did a simple desire to gain access to and training in their specialized weapons lead to this?

**End of Chapter 15**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out duaneaakre word press com

Have a great day!

Duane


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

It was early evening and I was on a break from Becker's latest training session, which seem to run from seven in the morning until nine at night. I was standing in the command center talking with Jess when the distinctly British-sounding warning Klaxon began to blare.

It had been seventeen days since we had first arrived in this version of 2009. Seventeen days since Jess and I had our little sparring match. It still seemed sort of amazing how that session had started out with Jess almost wanting to kill me because she thought I was making a play for Becker. Yet, somehow, by the end we were friends. And now after two and a half weeks, it almost felt like we had been friends all our lives. Perhaps it was simply that she was the closest of anyone here at the ARC to my own age.

Quickly, Jess spun her chair around and began typing madly at her keyboard. The only person I think I have ever seen type faster than her was Stefan and he cheated by being a vampire.

In less than a minute, Connor, Cutter, and Bonnie raced in through one entrance to the sprawling room. Stephen and Abby appeared seconds later from another entrance and Becker was only a few steps behind them and he was already strapping on his body armor and was carrying a weapon. Even though he was the closest with his glass walled office overlooking the command center, Lester was the last one to stroll up to Jess' oversized workstation. I glanced at the time display in the corner of the largest monitor. It read 7:27 PM. It was a sad statement on our lives that we were all within two minutes of the command center at this time of day.

"Right, so what have we got?" Lester asked, feigning a bored tone. But after seeing him on an almost daily basis for over two weeks, I knew this was just his way of projecting a calm, in-charge manner.

"Bloody Hell!" exclaimed Jess before she started typing even faster.

"What?" demanded Lester. I had never heard her use such language, so I understood the sudden disappearance of Lester's calm façade.

"An anomaly has just opened," Jess began with a distinct catch in her voice.

I glanced over to the giant counter mounted on the side wall. I'm not sure who had put it up or why, as it definitely had a morbid feel to it. It displayed a count of the number of anomalies that had opened in England since the ARC had officially opened for business four years earlier. It currently stood at 87. Jess hadn't been here from the beginning like Cutter, Lester, and the rest, but she had definitely been here long enough that a mere opening of an anomaly shouldn't have caused the reaction in her I was seeing. Then she continued and I started to understand.

"An anomaly has opened," she repeated. "And it is inside Buckingham Palace."

"Don't tell me the Royal Family is in residence," suggested Lester in a tone that failed utterly as an attempt to sound droll.

Jess swiveled to a different keyboard and screen and again typed furiously. Then she abruptly slumped back in her seat.

"Okay, I won't tell you the Royal Family is in residence," said Jess quietly. "But someone is hosting a State Banquet there tonight. The heads of state for the United States, France, Germany, and Russia are all present along with most of the leaders of Parliament and a thousand other assorted dignitaries and celebrities."

"Bloody Hell!" exclaimed Lester, not even realizing he was echoing Jess' earlier remark.

After Lester's outburst, we all simply stared in silence at the seemingly endless list of names of the party attendees scrolling down the screen. I never had any interest in politics, but even I recognized a scary number of names.

I was almost surprised that Lester was the first one to break free of the near reverie into which we had all fallen.

"Becker, what are you doing just standing here? Gather your team and get over there!" Lester barked at almost a shout.

"Getting in there is going to be a nightmare," responded Becker. "There will be a ton of security types, most of who aren't going to recognize our authority in this situation."

"I'll try to get through to whoever is in charge and let them know you are coming. And if a T. Rex is running around in The Ballroom eating Presidents, Prime Ministers, or, heaven forbid, Queens, I'm sure whoever is in charge will be happy for the help."

After giving Lester a curt nod, Becker sprinted towards the exit which lay along the most direct route to the garage. We all ran after him. But before we got to the exit, Lester called out.

"Miss Bennett, please join me in my office. I think the others can handle the situation."

Bonnie raised her hands in a 'what can you do' gesture towards me as she ground to a halt. This had been the first anomaly to open since our arrival and we were both anxious to do something to get our old lives back. And I think Lester realized the same thing.

I returned her look. We had agreed it was unlikely we would be able to utilize the first anomaly to appear; we would have to gain these people's, and in particular Lester's, trust first.

Turning my attention forward, I slid the phone from the side pocket of my black combat pants. Since using our original iPhones would raise undesirable questions, especially for me since I was _dead_ in this timeline, Caroline had procured us replacements. These first generation iPhones weren't as fast or included as many built-in features as our original phones, but beggars can't be choosers. And I hadn't wanted to know where Caroline had gotten the money for them or the Penthouse suite she and Lexi were sharing in a high-rise condo building overlooking the center of London. When you were in a strange town where no one knew you, compelling people to give you their money or their flats wasn't quite the same as doing it back home.

I hit the speed-dial and she picked up on the second ring. "Caroline, it's me. An anomaly has opened and we may need your help. It is inside of Buckingham Palace. Yeah, I said Buckingham Palace. And they are hosting some kind of State Dinner shindig at the moment. The place is absolutely crawling with dignitaries and security. If you can, wear something black like the commandos, we may need to sneak you in. Okay, see you in fifteen."

By the time I hung up, we had reached the weapons locker down on the garage level. I was pulling my combat vest from the rack when Becker stepped closer.

"Why did you invite the vampire?" asked Becker in a tone that implied he was more curious than annoyed.

"After the last couple of weeks I have come to realize your people are good at what they do, but they are only human. Caroline is three or four times faster than you and probably six or seven times stronger. Since we don't know what we are about to walk into, I would like to stack the odds in our favor the best I can."

Becker stared at me for a moment and then simply nodded before turning to shout directions at his men.

Abby walked over, tightening a holster around her waist for one of the handheld Electro Muscular Disruption or EMD guns as she came. I had just pulled several spare power packs for my rifle-sized version of the EMD weapon from the shelf and was stuffing them into pockets in my vest.

"Are you ready for this?" she asked.

I nodded, as I pulled my weapon from the rack. "Yeah, it is sort of exciting. And I never expected to end up inside of an actual palace."

Buckingham Palace was a bit over four miles from the ARC facility. Stephen, Becker, and I had met Caroline and Lexi by the Queen Victoria Monument in front of the Palace on our second day in London. I knew the Palace was open for public tours on certain days, but we weren't in town for sightseeing. However, as a result, at least I knew where our current destination lay.

And thinking back to that day, I couldn't help but remember the two vampires' appearances. Lexi didn't seem to have the same trouble adjusting to contemporary attire as Rachel had. No, she had been wearing a pale blue little cocktail dress that clung to every curve of her impressive body and revealed a wide swath of cleavage and at least eight or nine inches of her perfectly toned thighs. They had also found time to hit a beauty salon, as Lexi's hair had been cut just short of her shoulders and layered in a very flattering style. She had looked just like the Lexi I had met back in Mystic Falls and very different from the Lexi of Salem. And she had simply oozed sex appeal. I had easily sensed how Stephen, Becker, and every other male within fifty feet had begun to react to the presence of the two vampires. It had taken a lot of effort to get them to tone it down enough for us to retreat to a quiet café for a late lunch and a chat.

"Move it, Gilbert, Abby!" shouted Becker, as I realized I had been so lost in my musings I hadn't noticed everyone but us two women were already boarding the waiting trucks. Quickly, we raced over to join the rest of the team.

**End of Chapter 16**

Author's Note:

The action is definitely going to ramp back up in the next few chapters, hopefully to a level beyond what either _The Vampire Diaries_ or _Primeval_ have ever achieved on screen.

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out duaneaakre word press com

Have a great day!

Duane


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

It took us thirty minutes to cover the four miles separating the ARC from Buckingham Palace. Traffic had been an absolute disaster, although I think most of it was due to the State Dinner rather than the anomaly. In the end, we had had to abandon the trucks while still almost a mile away and run the rest of the way. At least when your party is dressed all in black and carrying what are obviously high-tech weapons, most people get out of your way. And I had never realized how far north London was compared to Virginia. Fortunately as a result, now in the middle of summer, we still had over an hour of daylight when we reached the Palace's front gate.

And by the time we reached the front gate, we were already seeing evidence that this anomaly hadn't opened to somewhere benign. Masses of people were streaming out of every exit of the sprawling Palace. And many of them were soaked in blood. Over the shouting and screaming, I could hear the sharp pop, pop, pop of handguns being fired and occasional longer bursts from automatic weapons. Someone in there, perhaps the American Secret Service agents, was battling something.

Becker slammed his open hand against the locked main gate to get the attention of the nearest guard on the inside. He was wearing the red jacket of the ceremonial guards, but somewhere along the way he had lost the tall bearskin hat and gained a rifle that looked decidedly more functional than the ones the color guard normally carried.

"I'm Captain Becker with ARC. Someone was supposed to call to let you know we are here to deal with the situation."

While the dazed guard slowly turned to look in our direction, Cutter, Stephen, and the two commandos, who had been helping them with the heavy cases containing the equipment to close the anomaly, finally caught up.

"I have orders not to let anyone in, sir," replied the guard.

Becker looked ready to argue with the man, but I knew we didn't have time for that. People were dying inside and I had already seen too much unnecessary death in my life. Quietly, I dialed my weapon down to its lowest setting, poked the end of the barrel through the wrought iron gate and pulled the trigger. The guard convulsed once and then collapsed to the ground. Becker had made me take a shot from the weapon at this lowest setting on one of my first days at the ARC to demonstrate the weapon's effect. I had been fine after twenty minutes of unconsciousness followed by four or five hours of excruciating pain. Becker had referred to it as a _Rite of Passage_. I just thought it had been stupid, but at least I knew the guard would live. Then I crank the power setting on my weapon up all the way and loosed a bolt at the gate's central lock. It burst apart in a satisfyingly spectacular manner and the heavy gates rocketed open about their outer hinges. Unfortunately, they bowled over a couple people trying to escape from whatever was going on inside.

Becker turned and stared at me. I lowered my weapon and then ran through the open gate.

"What are you looking at? We have people to save and the guard was simply in the way. He'll be okay in a few hours; you proved that to me the hard way. And if someone wants to prosecute me for that, well, good luck with bringing to trial a girl who is officially dead and buried."

Becker just shook his head, but immediately sprinted after me.

As I ran across the wide area separating the gate from the Palace, I had to wonder about the comment I had thrown out without thinking. Did it really bother me that much that the _me _of this timeline was dead?

While I continued to contemplate that thought, I suddenly realized someone was running beside me. I glanced over and up, expecting it to be Becker, but instead I found Caroline. I don't know where she had gotten it, but she sported the same black outfit including the body armor as we did. The only difference was the black vest sported the word 'Writer' stenciled across the front in large yellow letters whereas the rest of our vests were plain, unadorned black.

"Castle? Really?" I asked.

Caroline grinned. "I thought it was a cool inside joke. The TV show doesn't premiere in the States for another couple of months and I'm guessing it won't premiere here until sometime later. So only those of us from 2011 will _get_ the little joke. And I could hardly put the word _Vampire _on it."

Caroline had always had a slightly warped sense of humor.

"So who are you going to claim to write for? _Horse and Hound_?"

Caroline laughed as she nodded, but the laugh sounded more than a little brittle to my ear. We might be about to go up against dinosaurs just like back in the Cretaceous, but this time we didn't have the super-powered Bonnie to watch our back.

"Of course, since we are in England and all. I even dragged Lexi out to Notting Hill one day to look for the house with the blue door, but it seemed like half the doors were blue. I guess everyone is trying to cash in on the movie." Back when we were 13 or 14, we had gone through this _Notting Hill_ phase and we must have watched that movie about a dozen times over a two month period. Now I can't understand what I saw in Hugh Grant at the time.

My mind was still on that old movie, but I turned my eyes forward. We had almost reached the closest door of the Palace. A steady stream of people was still exiting from it and many of them were injured. It looked like we were going to have to force our way against the flow, if we were going to get inside.

I was just about to ask Caroline if she would like to lead the way, when I was interrupted by a squawk from my earpiece.

"Becker, team, this is Jess. I am detecting another anomaly forming near your location."

"Another anomaly?" asked Cutter through the headset. "The odds against that happening due to random chance are astronomical. This has to be Helen's doing or," and here he paused for a couple of seconds. "Or that of a witch."

I hit the transmit button on my headset. "Cutter, you saw Bonnie and Rachel were both back at the ARC. It is not my people."

Abby had told me what she knew about Helen Cutter, Nick Cutter's ex-wife. In our old timeline, she had been the one who had killed Cutter. And she had also been peripherally involved in Stephen's death. And according to Abby, Helen had been on a crazed, self-imposed mission to wipe out humanity to save the planet. I couldn't imagine what you would want to save the planet for if not for people, but Abby had just shook her head and said the criminally insane were seldom logical.

"There!" suddenly exclaimed Connor.

We all looked wildly around until we spotted Connor pointing off to our right. Looking in that direction I saw a gold anomaly just finish solidifying between the front of the Palace and the surrounding fence. It was about seventy-five feet away.

Immediately a giant dinosaur, like the one that had attacked Stefan's Porsche at the beginning of this whole situation, came charging out. It let out a mighty bellow and then scooped up the nearest person, who happened to be a portly woman in a floor length red dress. She barely got out a scream before the giant dinosaur teeth crunched down and then the dinosaur straightened up and swallowed her down in one gulp. Instantly, all the security and military personnel in the area opened up with an assortment of handguns, rifles, and automatic weapons.

I don't know if this small arms fire was doing any significant damage or was merely an annoyance to the large creature, but it went shambling off in a direction away from us.

"Cutter, Stephen, get this anomaly locked, now. Keep it locked down unless the creature heads back this way and it looks like it can be forced back through," directed Becker through the headset. "Jenkins and Hamilton, help the local security teams with this creature. The rest of you, let's get inside and see about the other anomaly."

I took one last look at the retreating dinosaur before turning to Caroline, who didn't have a headset. "Caroline, we need to get inside, now. Another anomaly is in the building somewhere."

With a nod, Caroline turned and started pushing her way in through the exiting crowd and I stepped into her wake. Where was the other anomaly, I wondered. And what was it disgorging? It had to be something smaller than the giant dinosaur outside or it would barely be able to move around. And with the large number of injured people we were encountering, whatever it was, it had to be a lot more numerous than a single one. I remembered the pack of velociraptors, we had encountered. Something like those creatures could be causing the level of injuries we were seeing. But it would take a lot more than twenty-five.

I felt my right hand tighten its grip on the weapon's stock while my left hand verified the power setting knob was turned to _MAX_.

**End of Chapter 17**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out duaneaakre word press

Have a great day!

Duane


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

"Oh, shit . . . oh, shit . . . oh, shit," mumbled Connor over and over from where he paced down the ornate hallway several steps behind me. Once we had gotten passed the congested outer doorway, Caroline and I had gladly relinquished the lead to Becker. Now, all of us civilians and quasi-civilians were grouped in the center with four commandos in front of us and four commandos behind us. And as soon as Becker had seen the scope of the situation here, he had called for additional reinforcements from the ARC, but they were at least thirty minutes behind us.

I glanced over my shoulder. Connor still held one of the portable anomaly detectors in his hand. Abby was walking along beside him and now she had her weapon in her hand, which hadn't happened before even when the giant dinosaur had appeared from the other anomaly. And I could suddenly see a lot more of the whites of her eyes as they darted about almost wildly. My two oldest acquaintances at ARC, who had survived almost a year back in the Cretaceous, were each in their own way suddenly displaying signs of more fear than I had ever seen from them before.

"What is it?" I asked at barely a whisper.

"Do you hear that, the buzzing sound?" Connor whispered back.

I took a moment to listen. Mostly I could hear screaming and sporadic gunfire from ahead of us, where Becker had said the Grand Ballroom was located and the State Dinner was being held, but when I concentrated I could faintly hear a buzzing sound.

"Yeah, what is it?"

"I'll never forget that sound. It is the sound of the wings of a Megopteran. We have run into them before and barely got out alive. They look like giant seven or eight foot long mutant winged Praying Mantis. They are from the future and are one of the two species of advanced predators that will apparently wipe out mankind. They are fast, vicious, and will attack anything that moves."

I was just trying to picture what Connor was describing when abruptly the buzzing sound became a lot louder. From around a bend in the corridor ahead of us, two flying creatures came racing towards us. Perhaps they did look vaguely like giant Praying Mantis, but they were at least a thousand times as scary as Connor's simple words had been able to convey.

Instantly, the front row of commandos dropped to their knees and started firing. Everyone with weapons behind them raised theirs and started firing over their heads. Even I had my EMD weapon up and firing before I fully realized what I was doing. These giant insect creatures were simply that scary.

The combined fire from ten EMD guns quickly brought the pair crashing to the ground. Becker was instantly back on his feet and sprinting forward.

Everyone quickly followed suit; obviously there was safety in numbers and combined fire power. When we passed the spot where the two giant insects had fallen, I could see their legs and wings were still twitching.

"Don't let the stinger anywhere near you," said Abby from behind me. "They use it to inject eggs into host bodies, and they don't care whether the host body is living or dead. In less than eight hours, miniature versions of the Megoteran will come burrowing out."

All of a sudden my body seemed to be drenched in a cold sweat. Our previous encounters with the T. Rex, velociraptors, and the giant snakes seemed like a walk in the park compared to this.

Becker had reached the bend in the corridor and paused to peek around the corner. He immediately gestured for everyone to get down and then he rounded the corner at a crouch.

I was the fifth person to round the corner and immediately the sound of buzzing increased tenfold. We were in another wide corridor filled with heavy chairs and tables covered with historical mementoes. The walls were lined with portraits of long dead people and if we weren't extremely careful and extremely lucky, I was very much afraid we were about to join them.

Becker and the men in front of me were using the furniture as best they could to stay under cover as they worked their way towards the ballroom entrance which was located at the end of this corridor through a pair of tall, ornate doors that were propped open. Through the open doorway I could see into part of the Grand Ballroom beyond. It was filled with long tables, many of them now overturned. And I could see bodies and body parts strewn everywhere. I couldn't see more than a fraction of the room from my position still thirty feet from the entrance, but at least fifty of the monstrous bugs were in my field of view. The scene reminded me more than anything of the old movie _Starship Troopers_ and in particular the scene where the troopers were in the fort that was about to be overrun by the endless hordes of giant bugs.

What the hell was I doing here? Suddenly, more than ever I wanted to be back in Mystic Falls. A handful of vampires and werewolves I could deal with, not this.

While I found myself wanting to curl up into a ball wishing fervently this was all a bad dream, Becker had made it all the way to the ballroom entrance. He sometimes came across as a little too priggish and 'by the book' for my tastes, but I had to give the man credit. He had balls of steel.

"I'm at the ballroom entrance," I heard Becker's voice whisper through the headset. It took me a moment in my terrified state to realize he was saying that for the benefit of the people back at the ARC who were also listening to this channel. "The anomaly has opened almost dead center in the ballroom. I estimate at least two hundred Megopterans have come through the anomaly and more are still entering the room. They appear to be in the process of setting up a new colony.

"Most everyone in the room is either dead or infested with eggs. A group of survivors with guns are barricaded behind tables at the far side of the ballroom, where it looks like the head tables were set up. I don't see any way we can make it across the nest to reach them. Jess, are there any exits at that end of the room and any routes that will get us there while skirting around the ballroom itself?"

"Give me a minute, I'm checking," I heard Jess' voice reply through the headset.

"Mister Lester, are you there?" asked Becker during the pause.

"I'm here, Captain," he immediately replied.

"Sir, I think we are looking at a Zeta situation. If these Megopterans get out of the building, I don't think we will ever contain them."

"Are you certain, Captain?" asked Lester and I could hear the hesitation in his voice.

"Yes, sir," was Becker's calm reply.

"How long will it take for you to evacuate the building?"

"It's too late to worry about us, sir. You need to implement the Zeta option as soon as possible."

"What's the Zeta option?" I whispered to Abby, who was crouched behind me.

"If an incursion occurs that looks like it could wipe out mankind, a protocol has been put in place to hit the anomaly with a tactical nuke."

Now Connor's 'Oh, shit' comment made a lot more sense. He was a smart guy and had been involved with these anomalies for a long time. As soon as he factored in the presence of Megopterans and the large number of casualties, he must have realized where this situation was headed.

"Could any of the walking wounded be infected with eggs?" I asked in a louder voice, forgetting my mike was open.

"Damn," whispered Becker. "Gilbert is right. We need to keep all the survivors bottled up here. We can't let any eggs out of the destruction zone."

"It is going to take some time to push the Zeta option through proper channels. Particularly since several of the people with final authority were in the Ballroom when the anomaly opened," stated Lester.

"You better figure out how to make it happen, sooner rather than later, sir," replied Becker, his voice a flat, almost dead monotone. "In a few hours instead of sacrificing a hundred thousand people, we may be looking at a hydrogen bomb solution and ten million fatalities to save mankind."

"Right. I'm getting off the line now to make the necessary phone calls. Good luck, Captain. Lester, out."

Lester had barely stopped speaking when Jess came back on the line. I could almost hear the tears in her voice; she obviously understood the significance of the Zeta option. But she was still gamely trying to do her job.

"Becker, I have the info you requested. An old servant's entrance is located behind the tapestry in back of the thrones. It leads to a small spiral staircase to the level below. Can the survivors reach it?"

I saw Becker raise his head slightly. "It's about thirty feet from their current position. It's not as close as I would like, but if it is the only option, they will have to make it work. Now, we just have to get word to them. Have you been able to tap the radio frequencies the security guards over there are using? Or can you find the cell numbers of any potential survivors?"

"Not yet, but I'll keep trying. In the meantime, head back the way you came. After rounding the corner take the third door on the right. It will lead to stairs to the lower level. When you get down there, I'll give you further directions."

"Roger," said Becker quietly and then I saw him start to inch his way back from the doorway.

"Give me your knife," whispered Caroline, who had been crouched next to me with her head pressed almost against my own. Obviously, with her superhuman vampire hearing, she had overheard most of the preceding conversation through my headset.

"What are you thinking, Caroline?" I asked, although I was fairly certain of the answer.

"I'm the only one who can make it across that room to warn those people and get them moving out the other exit."

"It's too dangerous," I said.

Caroline shook her head. "It sounds like we might all be dead in the next few minutes or hours anyway." Then she threw a familiar Caroline grin. "And after all the effort I made to get this vest, I hate to have it go to waste without ever getting to use it."

I stared at my friend for a minute and then reached to where the knife hung along the left side of my vest. I had never had any training in the use of a combat knife, but Becker had insisted I carry it. When I had first seen it with its eight inch blade and brass-knuckles style grip, it had looked almost frighteningly deadly. But after seeing these giant insects with their sharp mandibles, hooked claws, and deadly stingers, the knife suddenly looked downright puny.

After handing Caroline the knife she nodded and crawled slowly forward. She confiscated the knives from all four commandos in front of me, too, including Becker. The two of them held a hushed conversation for nearly twenty seconds before Becker finally handed his over.

As the rest of us crawled back, I saw Caroline tuck one knife in each boot and one in the back of her pants leaving one in each hand. I saw her wait, watching us until we had almost reached the next corner, before with a nod in our direction, she moved. She looked like a sprinter exploding from the starting blocks, a sprinter who could cover the hundred meters in less than two seconds. I hoped that would be fast enough.

**End of Chapter 18**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out my blog at: .com

Have a great day!

Duane


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

**Part 1**

As we headed down the stairs to the next lower level of Buckingham Palace, I briefly violated protocol by temporarily turning off my headset. Then I pulled out my phone. Quickly, I scrolled to one of the handful of numbers I had added since finding myself stranded in 2009 London in this altered timeline.

"Jess, it's Elena. I need you to get Bonnie and Rachel over here to the anomaly just outside the Palace as quickly as you can. I know Lester was adamant about not going back and altering history, but you must realize as well as I do that we are all screwed, probably everyone in the greater London area is screwed and it seems possible the whole planet is screwed. We need to go back and try to fix things."

Jess hesitated a moment and I could picture her looking back over her shoulder to see if Lester was watching from his office.

"I, ah, I agree. I'll do what I can to get them there as quick as I can."

"Thanks, Jess. I'll be going back on the headset in a minute, but call my phone if you need me. Hopefully, I won't be waist deep in giant killer insects."

"Watch your back, Elena. Bye."

The line had barely gone dead when I scrolled to the next number. It was almost hard to concentrate as the little voice in the back of my head kept shrilly chanting, 'They are going to nuke us. We are all going to die. They are going to nuke us. We are all going to die. They are going to nuke us. We are all going to die.'

My next call was picked up on the second ring. It was fortunate Lexi had adapted to some of the technology of this era almost as fast as she had adapted to current fashions.

"Lexi, it's Elena."

"Hi, Elena. What's up?"

"We have big, I mean huge problems. An anomaly has opened right in front of Buckingham Palace, remember the place I met you and Caroline way back on our second day here? We have to get through it; it is a matter of life and death. You need to get here as fast as possible. If you aren't here in time, we are going to have to leave you behind, it's that urgent."

"Is Rachel there?" asked Lexi and I could hear the concern in her voice.

"She and Bonnie are on their way. And they are the key if we aren't to be stranded on the other side of this one. But if they don't arrive in time either, we may have to risk being stranded."

"Got it, I'm on my way," responded Lexi. She obviously could read the stress in my voice.

"Okay, bye," I said killing the connection and jamming the phone back in my pocket before turning my headset back on.

"You really intend to go through the anomaly," panted Connor from behind me as we raced down a utility corridor under the grand ballroom. I could hear the buzzing of the insect wings through the thick floor, but I no longer heard any gunfire. Either the survivors in the ballroom had made it out or they were all dead.

"Do you have any viable alternative?" I asked. "If we stay here we are all dead and I'm not ready to die. Plus, my gut tells me the people in charge aren't going to act fast enough. Some of these insects WILL escape."

I don't know what Connor's response was going to be; he never had time to get a word out. Suddenly, the dreaded sound of buzzing wings filled the corridor. It seemed to be coming from somewhere not too far ahead. Instantly, everyone was diving for whatever cover they could find.

"Don't shoot, it's us," shouted a familiar voice. I sagged in relief at hearing Caroline's call. She was tough and fast, but that ballroom filled with the seven foot insects was the scariest place I could imagine.

The buzzing abruptly died down, as a door slammed somewhere ahead of us. We were just climbing out of our hiding places as four people, two men and two women staggered into view.

And like in one of those weird dreams where an unexpected change in reality seems perfectly normal, I realized in addition to Caroline I recognized both of the men. I never in my life expected to meet either of them. And I never would have dreamed if I did, it would be while fighting giant deadly insects from the future. But making their way towards us were Caroline, the President of the United States, Prince Harry carrying a submachine gun he had acquired God knows where, and a tall athletic woman similarly armed, who instantly struck me as a member of the President's security detail.

"We have got to get out of here," said Caroline. "The bugs are only two rooms behind us. And they must be able to smell us or something, because they never stop coming."

Caroline looked like she had been dipped in a vat of slimy, pus-green mucous. Her black commando outfit was torn open in at least five or six places and I could see blood oozing out under all the mucous. The front of her vest had been ripped out leaving only the 'W' and the final 'R' of her 'WRITER' logo. She looked dead on her feet.

"Are you okay?" I asked, as I watched the commandos hustle the President and the Prince forward.

"I don't think I have ever been so tired. I have never had to move at my top speed for so long without a break. And even then I was only slightly faster than the bugs. Eight people were still alive when I got to them, but we lost five getting out of the ballroom. We have been running and fighting nonstop ever since."

Except for Becker we were the last ones to get moving back the way we had come. He started guiding us forward.

"Would some blood help?" I asked. I saw the hunger in her eyes, but she shook her head no.

Even as we began to run, I pulled up my right sleeve. "Caroline, at the moment you being at one hundred percent may be more important to our survival than my being one hundred percent. Take some blood."

Caroline looked into my eyes again, nodded gratefully, and let her fangs extend. I staggered as the powerful suction, which felt like it was pulling at my very soul, began. I had given blood under similar circumstances before, although usually to Stefan, yet I never seemed ready for the impact to my body and mind. I barely noticed when Becker slung his weapon and then swept me up in his arms without breaking stride or breaking Caroline's connection to my arm.

Her feeding felt like it went on forever, as I got caught up in whatever chemical vampires naturally produce and introduce to tranquilize their victims. I was barely able to whisper 'you have to stop' before I drifted away to complete unconsciousness.

**Part 2**

Apparently, I wasn't out of it for too long, as we were climbing the stairs back to the main floor as I started to come around. Becker was still carrying me and I noticed Caroline had stowed her knives and was now carrying my EMD.

I was hearing voices in my head and it took me a moment to realize it was just the ARC issued earpiece. Then the words began to register and they jolted me fully back to consciousness.

"I say again, the cruise missile with the nuke has been launched. It will reach Buckingham Palace in four minutes, forty-five seconds."

"Becker, we have to get to the second anomaly," I said although I think my words came out at least a little slurred.

"Shush, Elena. I agree. We'll make it somehow," he replied.

"We aren't moving," I said.

"The main corridor is crawling with bugs. We wouldn't make it through."

I shook my head to bring things more sharply into focus. We were at the top of the stairs at the door which adjoined the main corridor. Only Caroline, Becker, and I were there, so the others must have made it through before the bugs arrived.

"Becker, you're like the ultimate Boy Scout, you are always prepared. Don't you have some explosives or something that will get us through one of the other walls?"

He glanced around again. "Not here, the walls are too thick."

Caroline looked around and then closed her eyes for a second. "There is a window on the next level up, I can feel the light. Let's go!"

Caroline grabbed me out of Becker's arms and raced up the next flight of stairs. I barely had time to see the window on the next landing before she twisted around and launched herself backwards through the window to protect me from the glass. Then, before the sensation of falling had even registered, Caroline landed on the ground outside the building.

"Can you stand?" she asked, already lowering me to my feet as my eyes gazed up to the broken window a good twenty feet over our head.

I swayed a little, but managed to stay on my feet.

"Becker, jump, I'll catch you," Caroline shouted as soon as his head appeared in the opening.

Either he had developed faith in the vampire's abilities over the last few minutes or the voice in our headsets that was now telling us we had less than four minutes, convinced him he didn't have any choice, because he leapt from the window without a hint of hesitation.

It looked distinctly odd to see the hundred twenty-five pound girl catch the two hundred ten pound man, but before I could consider it any further, Becker was on his feet, I was back in Caroline's arms, and we were racing for the end of the building where the second anomaly was located.

Caroline held her speed down to Becker's best pace, which gave me time to watch the scene behind us. And what I saw was extremely scary. A large row of windows, in what had to be the ballroom, were shattering one after another. And the giant flying bugs were streaming forth by the hundreds. Fortunately, they weren't heading towards us, but rather directly away from the building in one massive cloud. I don't know if they had some sixth sense for the danger that was approaching, but they were all trying to escape. And if they flew in a straight line, some of them might just clear the total destruction zone.

"Becker, the bugs are getting away," I screamed.

He glanced over his shoulder, but kept running. "It's too late, there's nothing we can do. We have to reach the anomaly."

Apparently, he had come around to my way of thinking and had decided we had to try to fix this from the past.

But then I remembered the thirty minutes it had taken for us to reach the Palace from the ARC. It couldn't have been over fifteen minutes since I had called Jess and the traffic had to be twice as snarled as it had been earlier. No way could Bonnie make it in time. We might be merely retreating into a dead end.

"The cruise missile will reach the Palace in three minutes, twenty seconds," the voice in my earpiece intoned, as we reached the corner of the building. The anomaly was now less than a hundred twenty feet in front of us. And it was still locked down.

Caroline accelerated to her top speed as she raced over to where Cutter and Stephen stood by their equipment. I just had time to see the rest of our party exiting the building through the same door that had been our original entrance point.

The tall vampire set me back on my feet. This time I only swayed a little before regaining my balance.

"We have to go through the anomaly, now," I stated towards Cutter. "It's our only chance."

Cutter nodded. "I have a bad feeling about what might be on the other side of this anomaly, if Helen is really behind this incursion. I wanted enough firepower before trying to go through."

I glanced around. Other than the rest of our approaching team, the immediate area was surprisingly devoid of other people. We hadn't been inside the building for more than twenty minutes. Where had everyone gone? But I didn't have time to think about it anymore, as Caroline shoved my EMD back into my hands.

Becker must have heard Cutter's words through the audio link, as now he shouted to his men. "We're going through the anomaly. I suggest everyone load a fresh power pack. But don't discard the partially used ones; what we are carrying is all we may be able to access for the foreseeable future."

Lexi raced up just as Becker gave Cutter the nod to unlock the anomaly. She was dressed in a short, mini-dress like she had been wearing the first time we met outside Buckingham Palace over two weeks earlier, only this time it was a pale green instead of blue.

"Where's Rachel?" she asked, as her eyes darted frantically around.

I, too, had been scanning the area for any sign of the two witches. It looked like it was going to be as I feared. The voice in my headset had counted down to two minutes fifteen seconds. They weren't going to make it and we couldn't wait.

"I don't know how the anomaly is going to interact with the nuke," shouted Cutter. "I suggest everyone try to find cover as soon as you are through."

"Lexi, I don't think they are going to make it," I said and I could feel my eyes tearing up. "But we have to go. Everything here is going to be destroyed in exactly two minutes by an explosion bigger then you can imagine."

I saw Becker lead six of the commandos through, all with their weapons raised against whatever might be awaiting us on the other side. I saw two more commandos step up on either side of the President and the Prince and urge them forward. The President's eyes were still sweeping around wildly like this was all new to him. It made me wonder whether we, I mean us Americans, even had a program like the ARC. Surely if we did the President would be in the know.

Prince Harry was standing there in an outlandish dark blue officer's uniform covered in gold buttons, over-the-top epaulets, and a row of large ribbons. The outfit looked like it belonged in the 1700's, not the twenty-first century. But his eyes were surprisingly calm as I saw him take a firmer grip on his submachine gun. I don't know why, but I had the feeling he had seen combat before, as hard as it was to believe of a member of the British Royal Family.

The voice in my headset was intoning 'One minute, thirty seconds,' when it was abruptly cut off as I stepped through the anomaly. Caroline and I each had an arm around Lexi, as we almost physically dragged her through with us.

The first thing I noticed were my legs sinking shin-deep into water. The next thing was the oppressive humidity and heat; it felt ten times worse than our first sojourn in dinosaur country. Finally, my eyes were drawn to our right where less than five miles away stood a massive active volcano. It seemed like half its cone was covered by the orange glow of active lava flows.

My reverie was broken when Cutter and Stephen, the last of our party, passed through the anomaly and stumbled into us from behind.

"You have to move. We have to get clear of the anomaly before the nuke explodes," said Cutter at almost a shout.

Higher ground and a loose tumble of giant boulders started about thirty feet to our left. I could see the people who had come through before us were over there already taking cover. Quickly, I began slogging my way through the swampy water, glad my trusty old tennis shoes had been swapped for nearly water-proof combat boots. I hadn't taken more than three steps before Caroline once again swept me into her arms and raced forward with Lexi at her side.

She lowered me back to the ground behind a group of boulders where most of the others were crouched. Less than fifteen feet from me were both the President and the Prince. The President was almost shouting for someone to explain what was going on, but all that really registered was the commando, I think his name was Vincent something or something Vincent, who was still maintaining the countdown that had earlier been coming through my headset.

The count was down to thirty seconds as I gazed around the group. The party consisted of fourteen men, three women, and two vampires. Since Bonnie and Rachel hadn't made it in time, we might be stranded here permanently. My thoughts quickly drifted back to the conversation I had shared with Abby during the ride to the ARC on our first day in 2009 London. Four women and one man hadn't been a big enough gene pool to set up a viable colony. Would fourteen men and three women be enough? Possibly, but it would require Abby, me, and the woman who looked like a Secret Service agent to be on almost continual baby-making duty. Did I want to be a part of that? Could I survive in a world with no Stefan where I would be required to make love to a bunch of different men? Could a situation with fourteen men and three women work or would the men devolve into some kind of warring factions for control of us women? God, maybe we should have just stayed in London where death would have been fast and painless rather than the slow death or extremely hard life this place probably held.

The countdown reached five seconds.

**End of Chapter 19**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out my blog at: duaneaakre . wordpress . com

Have a great day!

Duane


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20**

The countdown had reached four seconds until the moment when the nuke-equipped cruise missile was set to explode in the 2009 London on the other side of the anomaly when a powerful roaring sound suddenly drowned out the commando doing the countdown. It didn't sound like the roar of a dinosaur and seemed to be coming from the direction of the anomaly. I knew I was supposed to stay under cover in case any of the destructive power of the nuke made it through the anomaly, but I couldn't help but twist around and take a peek around the edge of the boulder behind which I had taken shelter.

And what I saw was so unexpected my mouth actually dropped open. A helicopter, or at least most of a helicopter, had just arrived through the anomaly and what I had heard was the roar of its turbine engines. It was apparent the width of the field put out by the anomaly was limited, as the outer two-thirds of the rotor blades hadn't made it through and just the stubby, madly spinning roots remained. And the helicopter must have slewn sideways during its passage through the anomaly as the last five feet of the tail, including the stabilizing rotor assembly, had been shorn away.

But the helicopter's cabin appeared to be intact. Or at least it was intact until it impacted the ground. It might have been due to most of the rotors being missing, but in the first glimpse I had, it already appeared to be on a downward trajectory before the forces of gravity could have come into play. Perhaps the pilot had put the craft into a dive to reach the anomaly before time ran out.

My eyes had less than a second to register all this before it was like a new sun had appeared barely forty feet in front of me. My body automatically jerked back down behind the boulder and my eyes squeezed shut, but they were already dazzled. The anomaly had turned into a blindingly incandescent ball at the same instant the nuke had to have detonated.

As I sat there with my eyes tearing up and waiting for the after image burned into my retina to clear, I thought about the London that was no longer there. Or at least the two mile circle centered on Buckingham Palace that had been turned, briefly, into a place straight out of hell. Had it been enough? Had all the giant flying insects been obliterated? Or would an even bigger chunk of the city be lost in another attempt to wipe the bugs out? Or was the whole planet of that version of the timeline doomed? We would never know the answers to any of these questions if we were stranded back here forever.

The tough vampire Caroline was the first one to move as the brilliant light from the anomaly dissipated. My eyes were just clearing enough to see that not only had the light disappeared from the anomaly, but the anomaly itself had vanished. Cutter and his team had been able to lock anomalies, but they had never been able to make them completely disappear, other than wait for them to disappear on their own. Well, we now knew a way; although hitting them with a nuke seemed a little extreme unless the circumstances were very dire.

I saw Caroline splash through the shallow water filling the area where the anomaly had been located and where the remains of the helicopter now lay. When she reached it, she gave the stuck pilot's door a brisk tug. The flimsy door let go and sailed fifteen feet through the air before landing with a splash. She leaned into the cabin and then grinned, or at least it looked like she grinned through my still blurry vision.

Rubbing my eyes, I had just risen to my feet to get a better look when I saw a man in a suit climb from the pilot's seat. It took a minute to get passed the unexpected incongruity of who I was seeing and then I was suddenly running forward.

Lester had a look of utter distaste on his face as his designer shoe disappeared into the murky water, but I could only grin. If Lester was here, then others from the ARC were probably in the helicopter, too!

Caroline had just gotten the rear door on the pilot's side of the helicopter open when I reached it. My grin got even broader when I saw Jess in the front passenger seat and Bonnie & Rachel in the cramped backseat. I was so happy; I pulled Lester into a tight hug.

"Please, Miss Gilbert, you're wrinkling my suit," exclaimed Lester, but I noticed he did return the hug before pulling away.

"What? How?" was all I managed to get out, as I turned to where Bonnie was just in the process of climbing out of the back.

"Well, you didn't think I was going to let you attempt to change the past without some supervision, did you?" stated Lester, as I pulled Bonnie into my arms.

We had barely begun a hug when the air was rent by a mighty roar. Lexi and half the commandos had followed us from the relatively dry area by the boulders and almost as one the commandos all raised their weapons. A large dinosaur that didn't look quite like a T. Rex, but something equally as ferocious, was approaching at almost a dead run.

Rachel was now in Lexi's arms and Jess was clinging tightly to Becker. Once Bonnie had asserted that the helicopter was empty, she lifted her right hand and chanted, "Levare hoc sublime et proice in monstrum!"

With a squelching sound and a nauseating release of swamp gas, the mud coated lower surface of the helicopter rose until the whole machine hung five feet above the lapping water. Then straight as an arrow the wreckage flew at the giant dinosaur. The remains of the helicopter hit it hard enough to knock the creature from its feet and with a mighty splash it crashed over on its side. As it struggled to right itself, we all retreated to the high ground by the pile of boulders. Quickly, Bonnie raised a force field similar to the one she had created back during our first visit to the Cretaceous.

We were just staring at each other grinning when a loud voice we had all heard hundreds of times before on TV newscasts growled out in a surprisingly gruff tone, "Will someone please explain what is going on?" We turned and stared at the President standing a little apart in his torn and abused tuxedo. Then as one we all looked at Lester, the ranking member of ARC present.

Lester looked more than a little flustered, but after only a moment seemed to gather himself. Then, just before he was going to speak, he noticed Prince Harry. He looked even more flustered, if that was possible, but turned until he was looking more distinctly in the Prince's direction than the President's.

"Your Royal Highness, I had no idea you were here. Her Majesty?"

The Prince shook his head. I noticed how his eyes glanced, not for the first time, at Caroline, before he responded.

"I'm afraid my grandmother didn't make it out of the ballroom after those creatures attacked," he stated in a calmer voice than I think I could have managed if I had watched my grandmother torn apart before my eyes by a swarm of giant Praying Mantis.

Lester was making the expected remarks of sympathy, as I glanced at Caroline and saw her eyes focused on the Prince. With a grin, I leaned closer and whispered, "The Prince and the Vampire?" in reference to the old Marilyn Monroe movie, _The Prince and the Showgirl_, we had watched more than once when we had been younger.

"Actually, _The King and the Vampire_ would be more accurate, as I'm pretty sure his father and brother were in the ballroom, too, and didn't make it out either," Caroline whispered back.

I should have been shocked at the casual way Caroline said it, but I had seen a lot of death today and I hadn't even entered the ballroom where the worst of it had occurred. And we had both seen a lot of death before we had ever left Mystic Falls. It was almost scary to realize how inured to it we had become and neither of us had yet reached our eighteenth birthday.

But crying about it at this point wasn't going to bring back any of the hundreds who had died in the ballroom, or any of the tens of thousands who had likely died when the nuke had gone off. It was time to start looking forward rather than back, as that was the whole reason we had retreated here.

And the thing I had been thinking about the most for the nearly three weeks we had been stuck in 2009 London was how to get back a better future than the one we had left behind when we had passed through the first anomaly. At first, before I had truly grasped our situation, I had merely wanted to get Stefan away from Klaus and then with Lexi's aid get him weaned back off human blood so things could go back to the way they had been. And if in the process of getting him away from Klaus, I could wreak some revenge on the Original that would have just been an added bonus.

But with more time to think about it and with a better grasp of the time anomalies, I had come to realize I wanted more than just to return to the old status quo. Why settle for the vampire Stefan when I could possibly have the human Stefan? For a human Stefan was what I truly wanted. I wanted a normal life where we could grow old together, where we could have children together. Why not try for what I really wanted?

Oh, we hadn't discovered some method to turn vampires back into humans, but Stefan had been human once, back in 1864. And now that we were in a place where Bonnie was once again able to open anomalies at will, why couldn't we simply open an anomaly to 1864 and retrieve Stefan from a time before he was turned? Oh, there were risks if we cut it too close – like running into Katherine, but I wanted Stefan as close to seventeen as possible when we grabbed him from the past.

Quickly, I turned towards Bonnie, whose eyes were darting between the President and the Prince. She was the one who could open anomalies and therefore she was the key. I just needed to convince her to help with this little plan before we got sucked into whatever scheme Lester and Cutter would dream up to try to restore the future, hopefully a future without giant killer insects.

**End of Chapter 20**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out my blog at: duaneaakre dot wordpress dot com

Have a great day!

Duane


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21**

The President, Lester, and Cutter all seemed to be trying to speak at once. I'm not sure if it was the case of having three alpha males trying to assert their dominance over our little group or something else. After a couple of minutes, Bonnie tried to break into their conversation, but they simply ignored her. Finally, she put two fingers into her mouth and let forth a piercing whistle.

"Now that I have your attention, I think we need to move this discussion and planning session somewhere else. It seems likely Helen Cutter was behind the attack on Buckingham Palace. Based on the discussions I have had with various people at the ARC, none of you have any explanation of how she has been able to come and go so frequently over the last five years, almost as though she knew when and where anomalies were going to appear. It seems obvious to me, she is another witch like myself and can call an anomaly forth at will. If she called forth this particular anomaly, it makes me more than a little nervous hanging around it for too long."

"You're saying my wife is a witch," exclaimed Cutter with an almost shocked expression on his face.

Lester grinned. "From everything I have heard about her and the little I have seen from direct observation, I was sure she was a bitch, but being a witch explains a lot."

Both Cutter and Lester were staring speculatively off into the distance, which finally allowed the President to rejoin the conversation.

"Who are you, Miss, ah?" asked the President. Even though Bonnie was the only other African-American present, it appeared to me the President was still seeing her as a young, high school-aged girl first and foremost.

Bonnie took a couple steps closer and extended her hand. "I'm Bonnie Bennett from Mystic Falls, Virginia, Mister President." She shook his hand before adding. "I'm a witch. And at the moment, I'm the only one present who can open an anomaly to get us out of here." That seemed like a little bit of a stretch of the truth as Rachel could probably open one, too. But I'm sure a twenty-first century President would be more comfortable dealing with a twenty-first century witch than a seventeenth century one.

"And where exactly is here?" asked the President. "I'm just trying to grasp what is going on. One minute I'm sitting at a banquet talking with the Queen of England and the next giant insects are killing everyone in the room. And seemingly in almost the next minute, you people were dragging me through some weird spinning crystal device and we end up here. And then that giant creature attacked us. It is a real live dinosaur, correct? God, I'm just glad Michelle didn't make this trip because Sasha had a dance recital back home."

Well, that explained why the President was coping as well as he was. If his wife had been killed by the horde of giant Praying Mantis, I think he would have been much more of a basket case than he was. Which again made me wonder about Prince Harry, he was holding up better than I would have expected considering his brother, father, and grandmother had all been killed only minutes earlier back in London. But then I remembered the night of the ceremony where Klaus reacquired his werewolf abilities. Jenna and then others had been killed before my eyes and I had been forced to cope, at least until Klaus had drained my blood and left me for dead.

"The crystalline device is what we call a time anomaly. It allows passage between two different points in history. This one has dumped us in the Cretaceous period," she said before pausing long enough to glance at Connor, who nodded his concurrence. "We are roughly seventy-five million years in the past.

"These anomalies have been opening all over the world during the last eight years, but most frequently in England. I think they are some strange, naturally occurring phenomena, but I also suspect Helen Cutter encountered one of the earliest ones. Somehow she discovered once she was deep back in the past that she could use her witch powers to open them at will. Since then, I suspect she has been behind many of the ones that have opened in England, which explains why the vast majority have opened there, rather than having the occurrences being more uniformly distributed across the planet."

"You're a witch?" asked the President, as though the enormity of the situation was still overwhelming him and, as a result, his brain was running with a thirty second lag and only just now was reacting to her earlier comment. "My grandmother told me stories about witches when I was little, but even then I found them hard to believe."

Bonnie lifted her right hand. Small lightning bolts surged about it for a few seconds steadily gathering in strength. Abruptly, she pointed to one of the further boulders and a massive bolt surged across the intervening space. When the bolt connected with the boulder, it shattered into a thousand pieces.

"Now, it's time we got out of here. I have no idea if Helen Cutter can track where an anomaly is going to open. I know I can't do it at the moment, but she has had years and years to hone her abilities. But somewhere else has to be better than just standing here waiting for the next shoe to drop." Bonnie turned ninety degrees and raised both hands while beginning to chant. In roughly thirty seconds, a new anomaly had appeared.

"Shall we?" asked Bonnie of the President while gesturing towards the anomaly.

"Ah, Bonnie," stated Becker, speaking to the group in general for the first time since Jess had arrived with the helicopter. "How about letting some of my guys go through first?"

Bonnie shrugged. "I believe it is perfectly safe on the other side of this anomaly. But be my guest, if it makes you feel more comfortable."

Becker nodded before giving hand signals to his men. Four of them formed up on Becker while the others had obviously been assigned rear guard duty. And doubtlessly, once Bonnie passed through the anomaly, the protective barrier she had been maintaining around the group would disappear.

As Becker and his men disappeared through the anomaly, the rest of us queued up. I found myself standing next to Lester.

"So, where did you learn to fly a helicopter?"

Lester gave a small shrug. "I wasn't always in the civil service. I flew helicopters for the Army back during Operation Granby, what you Americans called Desert Storm, in Kuwait in 1991. It was after I mustered out of the military that I joined the Home Office."

"With which unit did you serve?" asked Prince Harry, who was standing behind us.

"I flew the Westland Lynx for the Army Air Corps as part of the Ninth Regiment, sir," responded Lester, still seeming a little overwhelmed to be speaking directly to a member of the Royal Family. Some of these Brits, including Lester, seemed to take the Royal Family a lot more seriously than their nearly figurehead position seemed to warrant, at least to me.

The Prince nodded. "I just started my helicopter training back in March. My goal is to fly the Apache, but the Lynx would be my second choice."

"You seem pretty comfortable with that machine gun," I stated into the brief lapse in their conversation. Then after a moment, I threw in a 'Your Majesty'.

The Prince displayed a small smile. "I spent three months early last year deployed with my Regiment in Afghanistan. I saw a little action. But anyway, how about you just call me Harry until we get home? I mean you are American and we don't appear to be anywhere near the British Empire at the moment."

"Can I call you Harry, too?" asked Caroline, who had managed to end up standing next to the Prince.

"After the way you took on those giant bugs with only a pair of knives, you are welcome to call me anything you like. I mean, I thought some of the hand-to-hand combat instructors back at Sandhurst were good, but you would wade through them like they were bloody amateurs."

"You do realize I'm a vampire, right?" asked Caroline.

It was almost fun watching her flirt with the Prince. I mean she could just compel him to be attracted to her, but it looked like she was striving for something more real.

"Let's say, I suspected," the Prince said with a grin.

"You know about vampires?" I asked incredulously.

The Prince nodded. "Some secrets like the existence of vampires, witches, and werewolves are known to the Royals that aren't general public knowledge or even known to most of the government."

Hmm, maybe there was a reason the Royals deserved the respect Lester had been showing the Prince. I wondered what other secrets Harry might be privy to, as we reached the anomaly and I was forced to turn my attention forward.

**End of Chapter 21**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out my blog at: duaneaakre dot wordpress dot com

Have a great day!

Duane


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter 22**

We exited the anomaly to find ourselves standing in a wide glade surrounded by pine trees. The air was crisp and slightly cool. The sun was high in a clear blue sky. For some reason, it felt like home.

Becker and his men were spread out around the perimeter of the glade to provide security and early warning for any approaching intruders. The last few civilians and the last four commandos emerged from the anomaly behind me. Then after looking around, almost like she was counting heads to verify no one had been left behind, Bonnie chanted for a few seconds and the anomaly disappeared.

"So, where are we?" I asked when Bonnie was finished.

"Mystic Falls," she replied with a grin. "Well, where Mystic Falls will be located in the distant future. We are still one hundred twenty three thousand years in the past in the period between the two most recent ice ages. Humans won't reach the Americas for another hundred thousand years, so we won't have any problems from them. And no giant dinosaurs to worry about in this time period either, as I think the biggest predators around here will be mountain lions and bears. So this seemed like a relatively safe place to spend a little time deciding our next move."

I swept my eyes around the area again. The trees and the grass and everything did look just like back home and not at all like the vegetation back in the Cretaceous. And the air felt right, too. Our time back in the Cretaceous had been much shorter this time, certainly less than thirty minutes, but I had already started to feel my body beginning to react to the aphrodisiacal atmosphere back there. Harry, Stephen, Becker, and some of the other commandos had started to look damn appealing. And right at the end I think I had even been fantasizing a little about doing _it_ with the President. At least the black commando attire and protective vest I was still wearing did a better job of concealing my aroused state than the damp tee shirt and sheer pink bra had done during our initial trip through dinosaur country.

But now with my lecherous thoughts quickly clearing, I could focus on what I really wanted, which was to retrieve the human Stefan from the past, or technically the future from where we currently were located.

"Bonnie," I began quietly so the President, Lester, and Cutter couldn't overhear. "Before we get all wrapped up in how to remove the giant bug threat from the future, I would like us to make a side trip to 1864 Mystic Falls. When we first got involved in all these time anomalies and then ran into Lexi, I thought the best course was to figure out how to get Stefan away from Klaus and then get Lexi to help him break his renewed blood addiction like she has in the past. But after having several weeks to think about it, what I would really like to do is go retrieve him from 1864 before Katherine turns him into a vampire while he is still human. I would really like it if we could grow old together and maybe have children."

Bonnie stared at me for a few seconds and then grinned. "I think that is an excellent idea."

The witch had always hated dealing with vampires and only barely tolerated being around Stefan because of my interest in him. I suddenly knew she would be happy to help with any plan that kept him human.

"Can we just leave the others here to hash things out as far as what to do about what happened in 2009 London? It shouldn't take us that long to open an anomaly, find Stefan, open another anomaly, and return here."

Bonnie's grin faded.

"Like you, I've had several weeks to think about things since we first encountered the anomalies, in particular events back in Salem," she began. "I have all this power in the distant past and even in Salem, but not up in the twenty-first century. And while in Salem we learned a witch's powers could be neutralized by wrapping them in iron. Based on this information, I think what has happened to witch powers in our present is a consequence of all the iron in the world, in buildings, cars, railroads, simply everything.

"What I don't know is - when will the threshold be reached where my powers will be drastically reduced? By 1864 they had railroads, steamships, and factories making all kinds of machinery. The industrial revolution was well underway. If I go to 1864, I might not have the power to open another anomaly and we could be stranded there just like we were stranded in 2009 London."

I knew my face must have fallen. "So you mean we can't risk retrieving the human Stefan?"

"No, that's not what I'm saying," replied Bonnie. "I'm just saying I can't risk going through an anomaly to there. But you can go through, if I stay behind. I can open anomalies at regular intervals, you would just need to find Stefan and get him back to one of them to return here."

The thought of going to 1864 and possibly encountering Katherine without Bonnie and all her super-witch powers at my side was damn scary. But if that is what it would take to end up with a human version of Stefan, I was ready to risk it.

"Okay," I said. Taking a deep breath, I added, "Let's do it."

"I'll go with you," Caroline said, as she stepped up beside me and intertwined her fingers with mine.

"What if we run into Katherine? You're no match for her," I stated.

"And you are?" Caroline laughed. "She might be a lot older vampire than me, but I have the advantage of being from 150 years in the future. If we run into her, we'll figure out a way to cope; we always do."

"Thanks, Caroline," I stated with a nod of my head and I suddenly felt my eyes tearing up a little.

"Where are we going?" asked Harry, who had walked up with Caroline.

"Elena and I are going to our hometown of Mystic Falls in the year 1864. Elena's boyfriend is a vampire, who was turned there in that year. But she would prefer it if he was a human rather than a vampire. And since we have access to time travel at the moment, we are going to fetch him."

"Cool, it sounds interesting, I'm in," stated the handsome red-headed Prince.

"You don't have to do this," I stated. It was one thing for me and one of my best friends to risk going back to save Stefan. It was something else entirely to involve the man who at this moment was technically the King of England. What if he ended up killed, or stranded, or worst – changed into a vampire?

He must have read something in my expression. "You don't need to worry about me. I'm a big boy and I can take care of myself. And you don't know what my life is like. I've more or less been in the military since I studied at Sandhurst rather than going to school somewhere like Oxford. Yet because of my title, I was forced to skip my unit's first deployment to Iraq, as my presence would have put my people at risk. I had to secretly go to Afghanistan, and even then my tour was cut short when the press got wind of where I was. You don't know how much I would, for once, like to go somewhere where no one has heard of me or my titles."

It was a nice speech, but I saw the way his eyes kept flicking to Caroline. I think her presence on our planned little excursion was a big part of his sudden desire to be involved. Hopefully, it wasn't simply a byproduct of his breathing the air back in the Cretaceous.

"Fine, you can come along," I said, as I took in the pleading look in Caroline's eyes. Then I saw the expression on Abby's, Connor's, and even Jess' faces, who had all gathered around while the 'adults' were gathered in a separate group, probably trying to decide our fate.

"I'm sorry," I began with a shake of my head towards the others. "I want to keep the group going to 1864 small, more of us would just draw attention to ourselves."

The others slowly nodded; then Abby stepped closer. "Elena, let's switch weapons. My handgun sized EMD will be easier to conceal and it should pack enough of a wallop for anything you run into in 1864."

I hadn't really thought about taking my EMD with me. In fact, as the focus shifted to rescuing Stefan, I had almost forgotten it was still dangling from my hand. But having a weapon that would put down Katherine, at least temporarily, did sound like a good idea.

"Thanks," I said, as I disentangled my left hand from where Caroline still clasped it and took a step forward.

Abby and I exchanged weapons and then she pulled me into a quick hug. "Good luck, Elena."

Then suddenly Jess was giving me a hug, too.

"Good luck, Elena," she repeated. Then she added, "I hope you are successful in retrieving Stefan."

We had spent a lot of time talking about Stefan while I had been at the ARC. I think that was what ultimately convinced her I wasn't after Becker. Still, I'm sure she would be even happier if Stefan was back in my life rather than potentially lost forever with Klaus.

Bonnie also gave me and Caroline quick hugs. Then she turned and started another incantation. An anomaly quickly blossomed into existence in front of us.

"Elena, Caroline, the other side of the anomaly is located out in the cemetery, as I wanted to pick a location that was relatively private, close to town, and a place that would be mostly unchanged from what you know in our present. I'll reopen it at the same time every day until you return. Good luck."

I thought about it for a moment and realized twenty-four hours could turn out to be a very long time. I mean when this all started in less than twenty-four hours after we left Moscow on our way to the lake house, we went to dinosaur country, met Abby and Connor, traveled to Salem, saved Bonnie's twin ancestors, battled giant snakes and ended up in 2009 London. A lot could happen in twenty-four hours and not all of it good.

"Could you open anomalies at four hour intervals instead? A lot could happen in twenty-four hours. And I have a feeling once I get clear with Stefan; I am going to have pursuers on my tail. A full day is a long time to hide that close to the town. Of course, I hate to keep you busy at four hour intervals. If it has to be twenty-four hour intervals, I'll deal with it."

Bonnie shook her head. "It's not a problem. Time doesn't have to pass at the same pace here and up in 1864. As soon as I close an anomaly at this end, I will simply open the next one with the other end shifted forward four hours. Even if you are back there for several days, only an hour needs to pass here."

"Great. Then I guess I will see you within the next hour from your perspective."

I clasped Caroline's hand and moved towards the anomaly. I noticed Caroline's other hand was clasping Harry's. I had the EMD in my free hand and Harry still had his submachine gun in his. We had almost reached the anomaly when I heard Lester shout.

"Gilbert, stop. I won't have you messing with history."

I looked in his direction, as he ran forward, and threw him a quick wink. His opinion meant nothing to me. I didn't really work for him, in my mind my position at the ARC had been strictly a matter of convenience. I turned my attention forward. Retrieving Stefan was the most important thing to me. Once that was done we could worry about more trivial matters like saving the future.

Tightening my grip on Caroline's hand, I pushed thoughts of Lester from my mind and stepped resolutely into the anomaly.

**End of Chapter 22**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out my blog at: duaneaakre dot wordpress dot com

Have a great day!

Duane


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter 23**

**Part 1**

Barely thirty minutes earlier, we had been battling giant killer insects and racing to escape the rapidly approaching cruise missile with its nuke payload. Now I found myself standing out in the Mystic Falls Cemetery - the Mystic Falls Cemetery of 1864, if Bonnie hadn't missed her target. It was twilight, but I couldn't tell if it was dusk or dawn until I saw some familiar landmarks to determine which directions were east and west.

I hated being out in the cemetery after dark. Under normal circumstances all cemeteries are creepy at night. But for the last couple of years we had been dealing with vampires, werewolves, and even ghosts out here in the dark of night. The creepiness factor of the Mystic Falls cemetery was right off the scale for cemeteries as a whole.

"I see what has to be Fell's Church," whispered Caroline pointing off to our left.

Fell's Church had been burned to the ground on the night Stefan and his brother had been turned. If it was still standing, it meant Stefan was still human and Bonnie hadn't missed her mark.

I had just turned my gaze in that direction to verify what Caroline had said with my own eyes when I heard a commotion behind us. Glancing back, in the glow of the rapidly fading anomaly, I saw Lester trip over a headstone and crash to the ground with a curse that must have been audible for a mile. The idiot bureaucrat had followed us through.

"Would you please keep it quiet, Mister Lester," I hissed. "Depending on exactly when we have arrived, potentially dozens of vampires could be in the area. And the American Civil War is raging. Several battles were fought near here and troops from either side could be scouting around. It will be hours before Bonnie opens another anomaly through which we can return, so we can't risk being caught by anyone or we may be stuck here or worse."

Lester had climbed back to his feet and it seemed like only while he was levering himself up that he realized we were in the middle of a graveyard. Quickly, he removed his hand from the headstone.

"Civil War?" he echoed. "Where are we? I thought you were headed back to 1692 Salem to fix things, although I couldn't fathom why you didn't bring along the two people who were native to that era."

As Lester was speaking, I finally had an opportunity to look at the old Church. Up in the future, all that had existed above ground level were bits and pieces of its foundation. But what I saw was enough to help me get my bearings. I now knew which way was west and therefore knew the time was just after sunset rather than just before dawn. Of course, it didn't give me a clue as to today's date.

"The year is 1864 and this is Mystic Falls, my hometown. We are here to find and retrieve my boyfriend before he becomes a vampire. Once that is accomplished, then we can worry about fixing history," I whispered in reply to his question. "Now, we need to move. Hanging around a cemetery isn't going to get our mission accomplished."

I started us moving in the general direction of the cemetery's main exit.

"So, what's the plan?" asked Caroline.

What was the old theorem called? Occam's Razor? Anyway, the one that said the simplest solution was usually the best solution. And the simplest solution was to get to Stefan as quickly as possible. The sooner we connected and I convinced him of my story, the better.

"Let's head to the Salvatore Estate and see if Stefan is at home," I stated.

"What if someone sees us dressed like this?" asked Caroline as she altered our course slightly more to the right. "We are going to stick out like a sore thumb. Not to mention how I utterly reek of giant insect guts."

"Well, keep your eyes open for any potential source of clothing along the way," I replied. Then I couldn't stop a small grin. "But I don't know what we can do at the moment about getting you a bath. It's not like they have any modern motels where we can check in and use the shower. And even if they did, we couldn't show up dressed like this. Therefore clothing is the first order of business. Unless, of course, we can quickly hook up with Stefan and then hide out in the woods until the next anomaly appears."

"Okay," Caroline said. "But the way our luck has been going the last few hours, hell, the last few weeks since this whole time travel thing began, I think you better start thinking about a backup plan in case we don't find any convenient clothing, or Stefan isn't home, or Stefan is home but unwilling to accompany us."

I knew Caroline was right and therefore I began racking my brain for what I knew about 1864 Mystic Falls and realized perhaps I should have done a little more planning before having Bonnie open an anomaly to here. Who did I know of back here that might be willing to help? Not that any of them would know me or have any reason to help me.

The first name that came to mind was Jonathan Gilbert, my ancestor and the inventor of several devices for use against vampires. Or at least based on what the Founder's Council knew, he was the inventor. But the device that could take down all vampires within a five block radius that my biological father, John, had used back on Founders' Day had ultimately turned out to be powered by a witch's spell. Which made me wonder about his other device, the Vampire Compass built into the pocket watch. Was it, too, more of a witch's creation than an invention by Jonathan Gilbert? And thinking about it made me reach down and pat the left side pocket of my combat pants. I had been carrying the Vampire Compass ever since Stefan had given it to me almost eighteen months earlier. It had been in my pocket the day we had gone through the first anomaly and it was still there. At the moment, if I pulled it out, it would simply point to Caroline as the closest vampire, but eventually it might come in handy if I needed to determine if Katherine or any of the other vampires she created in Mystic Falls were around.

And if Katherine had already arrived in town, perhaps I could use that to our advantage. Oh, I certainly couldn't go to her for help, she was the one person who would know who I was. Perhaps not by name, but she would instantly realize I was a Petrova doppelgänger. She would doubtless decide to turn me over to Klaus just as she had tried up in the future. And I most definitely didn't want to end up in his hands back here.

But while I couldn't risk meeting her face-to-face, I could use the same ruse she had used so many times in my own era. I could pose as her to move freely about the town. To the best of my knowledge, outside of Damon and Stefan, none of the humans in Mystic Falls had any idea she was a vampire until the final hours before Stefan and Damon were turned.

However, it was a waste of time to pursue that line of thought until I knew whether she was even in Mystic Falls. I don't think she was in town for more than a couple of months, and with the Founders' Day celebration, when Stefan would be turned, happening in the fall, if we arrived any time during the first six months of the year, we would be long gone before she might even arrive.

As we exited the cemetery, I realized we had almost a two mile hike to reach the Salvatore estate, if we were to skirt around the edge of town to avoid running into anyone from this time. Quietly, I began to describe what I knew of events back here for the benefit of Harry and Lester. If we ever got separated, it was best if they knew as much as they could about the current situation.

**Part 2**

I couldn't suppress a sense of trepidation as I mounted the steps leading to the broad veranda stretching around the front three sides of the large white Salvatore mansion. This building, which had been lost in a fire somewhere between here and my present, didn't look at all like the brick Tudor estate of the future. No, this mansion looked like a traditional plantation house of an earlier century. Suddenly, I remembered from somewhere, perhaps Alaric's history class, that the traditional wide verandas served the important function of keeping the sun from directly beating against the walls of the house in this pre-air conditioning era.

As I approached the large front door, I forced my thoughts away from the architectural diversion and back to the situation at hand. On the other side of this door could be my boyfriend of the last eighteen months. Or at least a version of him, a version that wouldn't know me from Adam. How was I going to convince him to drop everything and simply walk away from his life merely because a perfect stranger asked him to? I had been considering the possibility of coming here since almost the moment we had arrived in 2009 London and I had realized the past could be changed. But somehow the fantasy of coming here had never gotten to the point of having an actual conversation with the human Stefan. In my almost silly daydreams, the door had opened and Stefan had instantly recognized me as his soul mate and immediately swept me into his arms. But now, standing here, I knew that scenario didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being true.

But I couldn't just stand there and after coming this far I couldn't turn and walk away. So after a single deep breath, I reached up and lifted the heavy brass knocker. After banging it three times, I took a full step back and then forced myself to wait. My palms were suddenly damp and I couldn't stop myself from rubbing them across the coarse material at my sides.

It seemed like I waited almost forever on that dark and gloomy porch that was lit only by the feeble glow coming from the windows along the front of the house. But in less than thirty seconds I heard the latch rattle and then the door began to slowly creak open.

At first all I saw was a backlit silhouette and it was immediately obvious it didn't belong to Stefan. The person answering the door was short and very rotund, not tall and slim like Stefan. Then a candle in a smoked glass holder was lifted and I could see the person was a middle-aged African-American woman. And as soon as I saw her, I remembered we were back in a time and place where slavery not only existed, but was actively condoned. Was the woman a slave?

The woman raised the candle high and then I saw her eyes run up and down my body in a disapproving manner. I was wearing a plain gray dress, which had been the only article of clothing we had found on our hike over from the cemetery. It was a poor fit, being way too large in the chest area and I had had to roll the sleeves up several times to keep my hands from being lost in the folds. But it was either this or the filthy commando gear I had been wearing when we had been battling the giant insects and then had been splashing around in the swampy Cretaceous era.

"Miss Katherine, what are you doing out here? And wearing that? Didn't you go to the Ball with Masters Damon and Stefan? Were you waylaid on the way?"

Damn, damn, damn. Katherine was already in Mystic Falls. Then her other words registered. With a sudden sense of panic, I couldn't stop myself from blurting out, "The Founders' Ball?"

At the woman's nod, my heart sank. This was the very night Stefan and Damon would be turned. I had only a matter of hours to find him and convince him to leave with me. Why couldn't the anomaly have opened six months earlier?

**End of Chapter 23**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out my blog at: duaneaakre dot wordpress dot com

Have a great day!

Duane


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter 24**

For a moment I just stared at the woman. But then I remembered I needed to pretend to be Katherine. And Katherine wouldn't just stand out on the front step. And she wouldn't be caught dead in what I now realized was a dress that would only be worn by a slave. No, Katherine thought she was better than everyone, or at least better than any mere human, and would behave accordingly.

I straightened my shoulders and forced a haughty expression onto my face. "Yes," I exclaimed, as I swept passed the woman and strode briskly into the foyer. "I stopped to show my dress to my friend Pearl while Damon and Stefan went on ahead. After I left Pearl's, the carriage was attacked on the way to the Ball. While the coachmen fought them, I tried to get away and my dress was ruined in the process. It has to be those damn Yankee sympathizers. Sheriff Forbes and Mayor Lockwood need to be notified at once. And I need to change so I can still make it to the Ball."

"Of course, Miss Katherine," the older woman said with a bow of her head as she set her candle on the side table. "Mister Giuseppe hasn't left yet. I will see that he is informed at once. I'm sure he will want to speak to you before you change. I'll tell him you are waiting in the parlor."

I gave a brief nod while trying to maintain a look of fire in my eyes. The other woman quickly cast her eyes down and I felt sorry at causing that reaction, but I had to stay in character. And if I was about to meet Stefan and Damon's father it was even more important.

The slave quickly headed up the spiral staircase leaving me standing in the entry hall. Obviously, Katherine would have known where the parlor was, but I hadn't a clue. But I needed to find it before anyone discovered me wandering the corridors looking lost. Fortunately, I located what had to be the parlor behind the second door I tried.

The ornate parlor was barely lit by modern standards by a half dozen candles and a small blaze in the fireplace. As I entered the room, I was fervently wishing I knew or remembered the sequence of events for this evening better. At some point Giuseppe Salvatore learned from Stefan that Katherine was a vampire. He had then drugged Stefan's wine with vervain so when Katherine drank his blood the vervain would transfer into her system. It had incapacitated her long enough for Giuseppe and others recruited by the Council to drag her away.

The big question was whether Giuseppe had yet learned of Katherine's nature. Would he attack me as a vampire as soon as he learned I was here alone? If he just tried to drug my wine, it wouldn't hurt me. However, it might convince him Katherine really wasn't a vampire like he feared and change all the subsequent events that were set to transpire this evening. Of course, if I managed to convince Stefan to leave with me before he killed his father that would certainly have an even bigger impact on things.

However, I couldn't see anything to do but _wing it_ and hope for the best. Therefore needing a distraction to keep from fretting on the situation until Giuseppe arrived, my eyes settled on the painting over the fireplace. It showed a man and a woman and a pair of boys. As I moved closer, I realized it had to be Stefan's family. Damon looked to be about eleven and was the more recognizable of the two. Stefan looked about four and was utterly adorable. I had never seen a photo or a painting of either of them as children and it was fascinating to see them as normal kids rather than the old, almost eternal vampires I had always known. How was it going to be to meet the seventeen-year-old human Stefan for the first time after knowing the vampire who had been trapped in a seventeen-year-old body for one hundred fifty years? Was it going to be like meeting an entirely different person?

Suddenly I remembered the iPhone in my pocket. I had to get a quick photo of the painting to save for posterity. Briefly, I wished I still had the iPhone I had been carrying when we had gone through the first anomaly, as it had a much better camera and a flash, which would have been a big help in this dim room. But then a flash might have lit up the whole end of the house and brought people running.

I had just jammed the phone back into a pocket when I heard someone enter the room behind me with a heavy booted stride. After one last lingering glance at the four-year-old Stefan, I put on my best Katherine face and turned around.

A tall man of about forty-five stood staring at me. He looked more like an older version of Damon than an older version of Stefan. He was elegantly attired for this era and must have been ready to depart for the Ball. I was just glad the long white wigs, like the minister back in Salem had been wearing, had gone out of style. Although seeing Stefan in a long wig did have sort of a kinky appeal. But I forced that thought down before my face broke into a grin I doubted Katherine had ever displayed.

"Miss Pierce, I am sorry to hear about your tribulations. Are you alright? Can I offer you something to calm your nerves?"

I was certain proper etiquette required an offer at this time regardless of whether he thought I was a vampire or not, so I would have to see if I could taste any vervain in it. I knew the real Katherine would accept the offer. All the vampires I had ever met seemed to drink like fish. Damon had once explained that alcohol would, at least briefly, help dull the craving for blood.

"Thank you, Mister Salvatore. A small brandy would be welcomed. Then, I would like to get out of this disgusting dress and into another gown so as to reach the Ball before it is too late."

With a nod, Stefan's father moved over to a small table laden with crystal bottles filled with a variety of liquors. I noticed how he turned just enough so I couldn't see his hands from where I still stood over by the fireplace.

Speaking to this man was an utterly weird experience and it seem to drive home for the first time the whole eeriness of my life over the last few weeks. I had been to the Cretaceous Era twice. I had been to 1692 Salem and 2009 London. But none of those experiences were quite like this. For from my point of view, a little over a year ago I had helped Stefan dig up this man's long dead body. Emily's Grimoire, or _Witch Cookbook_ as Damon liked to call it, had been buried with him in his coffin. We had spent a long evening out in the Mystic Falls Cemetery, not one hundred feet from where the anomaly had dropped us, digging up his grave. His corpse had been nothing more than a skeleton, but now the man stood in front of me very much alive. As I said, the utterly weird aspects of my sudden time-traveling existence were starting to sink in. But then he began to speak again and I forced my attention back to the present.

"So, Miss Pierce, you were attacked by Yankee sympathizers while on your way to the Ball?" he asked conversationally.

"Well, they weren't wearing blue uniforms, but who else would attack a lady here in Mystic Falls? Is the fighting getting near the town? Should we be preparing to move somewhere safer?"

Salvatore turned with two goblets in his right hand each containing about two fingers of a rich amber liquid. As he strode across the room, he replied. "I had lunch with Sheriff Forbes today and he told me a column of Union troops was spotted about fifteen miles east of town, but they were headed south, probably to join the forces besieging Petersburg. Outlying scouts might have come this far west, but they would have been in uniform. And I think if they were in the area they would have more important objectives than attacking women in carriages."

By this point, he had reached me. Shifting one of the goblets to his left hand, he extended it in my direction. I reached for it, hoping my hand wouldn't tremble. With the merest of nods, I accepted it from him.

But before raising it to my lips, I stated, "Well, someone attacked my carriage. I was lucky to get away with the price being the mere loss of my gown, but with my virtue intact."

He raised his glass. "To Confederate victory, so we can focus our attention on scoundrels who cowardly attack helpless women."

I could never imagine Katherine as a helpless woman, but I merely raised my glass in a silent salute before lowering it to my lips. I took the smallest possible sip, but it was enough to introduce a line of fire down my unaccustomed throat. My eyes began to water and for a moment I was afraid I was going to start coughing, which wouldn't at all be in character for Katherine. Well, Salvatore might think it to be in character if he didn't know how a vampire would react to the vervain I could faintly taste. I knew a vampire's reaction would be much more violent than a cough, but I didn't want to risk him not knowing and taking it for a sign he should pull out the stake he was doubtlessly concealing in his bulky waist coat.

I forced myself to take a second slightly longer sip before setting the goblet on the mantel. I was going to need my head clear for the next few hours and I definitely wasn't used to drinking the hard stuff.

Closing my eyes for a moment as though I was savoring the brandy, I waited until the fire in my throat died a little before speaking.

"Thank you, Mister Salvatore. Now, if you would excuse me I need to change, as I would hate to arrive at the Ball any later than is absolutely necessary. I understand they are holding a pageant for the young women of the town and my old friend Pearl's daughter, Anna, is going to be one of the contestants. Although it isn't quite the same as the debutant balls we had back in Atlanta when I was younger, I would still hate to miss her debut."

Salvatore had been staring at my face intently. Now he gave a curt nod. I couldn't quite decide if the expression on his face was one of disappointment or relief.

"Of course, Miss Pierce," he said while gesturing towards the parlor's door. "The carriage should be out front by the time you have changed. I was planning to leave shortly, but I will wait and see you safely to the Ball."

"Thank you, Mister Salvatore," I repeated again before I stepped towards the door. I paused for a moment in the doorway and looked back. "I appreciate your support and kindness in my moment of need."

I felt his eyes linger on my face before he gave a small nod of acknowledgement. Perhaps he thought the vervain took time to act.

As I climbed the stairs to the second floor, where I assumed Katherine's room was located, I felt my shoulders sag a little at successfully convincing Stefan's father that I was Katherine. However I knew my charade as Katherine wasn't over, but barely beginning. Next I would have to convince Emily Bennett, Bonnie's ancestor and fellow witch, that I was Katherine and that my hastily contrived story was really the truth. And Emily, who I remembered was acting as Katherine's maid during this period to hide her witchy nature, would know Katherine better than anyone else in Mystic Falls. But facing her was necessary, for only in one of Katherine's gowns would I be able to blend in at the Ball and hopefully get a chance to speak to Stefan alone and convince him to go with me.

Moving down the fortunately empty second floor hall, I quietly started opening doors, hoping to find Katherine's room before anyone found me. As I walked, I stuck my hands deep into the side pockets of the oversized slave dress. I suddenly needed the reassurance provided by the items hidden there. My right hand closed briefly on the grip of Abby's EMD gun. My left hand touched my iPhone, the enchanted translating pebble, and the vampire compass. They were going to have to be enough to get me through the next couple of hours.

**End of Chapter 24**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out my blog at: duaneaakre dot wordpress dot com

Have a great day!

Duane


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter 25**

"Miss Katherine, what are you doing here?" asked a modestly dressed African-American woman, who was sitting by a lamp sewing. This bedroom was behind the fourth door I had tried. In the faint glow of the lamp, I could see the room had more frilly decorations than the previous three bedrooms I had looked into. Assuming this was Katherine's room and this was Emily Bennett, I stepped fully into the room and then ease the door closed behind me.

The girl, who didn't look a day over seventeen, put her needlework aside and rose to her feet. She took a single step towards me before stopping and then staring at my face.

"You're not Miss Katherine," she stated with conviction. "Who are you?"

So much for keeping who I was a secret from this girl. Bonnie had always been able to sense when a vampire was in her presence. Sometimes not until she physically touched them, but with less iron in this time period than up in the twenty-first century, this witch might still have access to more power than Bonnie had back home.

"You are Emily Bennett, right?" I asked. "I'm Elena Gilbert."

"Of the Gilberts of Mystic Falls? How is it that you look exactly like Miss Katherine?"

With a shrug I said, "It is difficult to explain. Let's just say a distant descendant of your family, her name is Bonnie Bennett, used her powers to help me travel through time to reach here. I have come to rescue Stefan before Katherine turns him. In my time, Stefan has been a vampire for hundreds of years, but he and I both wish he were human. I love him more than you can imagine.

"Tonight's Ball is the last chance I have to reach him before it will be too late. I need one of Katherine's gowns, if I am going to be able to mingle with the people there without anyone noticing. Can you help? You are my only hope." For a second the scene where R2D2 displayed the hologram of Princess Leia popped into my head, but I forced the image down and concentrated on Emily's face.

Bonnie hated vampires and I suspected Emily did, too. She might at the moment work for Katherine because of a debt she owed the vampire, but I knew that hadn't fully suppressed her natural inclinations. When Stefan had been going through a particularly dark period, he had told me a little about his and Damon's earliest days as vampires. In return for saving the vampires trapped in Fell's Church from the fire by sheltering them in its subterranean tomb, Emily had elicited a promise from Damon to protect her and all her descendants in Mystic Falls. However she hadn't elicited the promise until after the brothers had completed their transition. And Stefan told me she had hoped they wouldn't feed on human blood, but merely allow themselves to fade away. So if she hadn't wanted them to become vampires at even that point, she might be willing to help me now.

Slowly, the witch stepped closer. When she was right in front of me, she raised her hand to my cheek while staring intently into my eyes.

"Yes, Miss Elena, I will help you," she said as she lowered her hand.

"Please, just call me Elena. Where I am from, everyone is equal."

"A time like that truly exists?" she asked, while already moving towards a heavy wardrobe against the room's left wall.

"The Union will ultimately win the war," I stated. "Slavery in America will end. But it will still be a very long time before the old ways will be forgotten and everyone will be truly equal. But the day will eventually arrive."

"I'm glad to hear things will someday be better, even if it doesn't happen in my time," replied Emily while laying a beautiful green silk gown on the bed.

As I stared at the bed, suddenly realizing Katherine had made love to Stefan in this very room, on this very bed, I felt an almost insane rage briefly fill me. Stefan was mine. She should never have touched him. In that instant I wanted to destroy Katherine more than I had ever wanted anything in my entire life even more than I wanted to destroy Klaus.

"Elena, are you alright?" asked Emily, as she approached with what was obviously an old fashioned corset in one hand and a hoop contraption in the other.

"Fine," I replied even though I could feel my eyes burning and my nostrils flaring. "I just so hate Katherine and what she did to Stefan."

"Well, with you here now, I think we can fix things," replied Emily. "But first we need to get you into the gown. So, off with that dress."

I nodded and then undid the buttons down the front. Quickly, I slithered out of the coarse wool material until I was standing there in just the black sports bra and panties I had been wearing under the commando gear.

Emily was staring at my skimpy attire in wonder. But then they didn't have modern elastic materials back here or the additional hundred and fifty years of underwear development.

Finally, she said, "The top piece will have to go, too. It won't fit under the top of the gown."

I nodded, but could feel a blush blooming across my cheeks as I removed the bra. I had been naked around Bonnie and Caroline before, but this felt completely different. It was apparent from what I had seen in movies set in this time period that I would need the help of the corset to get into the tight gown. And it was equally obvious I couldn't put on the corset by myself. I hadn't ever needed help getting dressed before, or at least not since I was a little kid, so it all felt embarrassing.

Emily stepped closer, but then abruptly wrinkled her nose. "I'm sorry to say this, but Elena, you reek. We need to do something about it before getting you dressed."

I remembered wanting to say the same thing the first time I had met Abby back in the Cretaceous. My day already felt like it had been infinitely long. My body had been drenched in the stink of sweat from battling giant insects. Caroline had carried me in her arms while covered in the guts of the countless Pray Mantis she had battled. I had waded through a shin-deep swamp. And then I had come almost straight here, nowhere along the way had there been a time or a place to manage a refreshing, cleansing shower.

"You're right. You wouldn't believe the day I have had or the things I had to go through to get here. Do you have anything I can use to wipe off the worst of it?"

The young witch nodded and quickly retrieved a wash basin and a cloth. She poured water into the basin and then added something from a small bottle that smelled like lilacs. I was thankful when she just handed me the cloth, as I thought for a moment she was going to wash me in the same way she was going to have to dress me.

I worked in silence for a couple minutes while Emily managed to busy herself with other things to give me an illusion of privacy. Finally, Emily stepped closer at just the moment I decided I had done the best I could do under the circumstances.

As she took away the damp cloth, Emily handed me a piece of white silk about twelve inches wide by three feet long. When I just dumbly stared at it, she asked, "You've never worn a corset before?"

I shook my head. "From my perspective, they went out of fashion about one hundred years ago. After that, they were replaced by things like girdles that had a somewhat similar body shaping purpose, but which used stretchy, elastic material rather than the bone stays and lacing. In my time, if you want a shapely body, you are expected to put in the necessary time at the gym rather than resort to artificial support. Or at least for women who care, a lot of women just let themselves go and couldn't be bothered to look shapely."

"It sounds like a very different time," stated Emily, as she took the piece of silk from me and wrapped it around my body just below my breasts. Then getting back to the topic at hand she added, "The silk will help keep your skin from being pinched as I tighten the corset's laces."

I used one hand to hold the silk in place until Emily had the corset wrapped around my body and had tightened the laces until the corset began to hold the silk mini-chemise in place.

"I'm afraid this is going to hurt a little," she stated. "Miss Katherine likes to have a nineteen inch waist when she is wearing a ball gown. Sometimes I am not certain whether it is the resulting appearance she likes, or the pain it causes to remind herself she is alive or at least undead."

Nineteen inches? I had always considered myself pretty skinny, but my waist is twenty-four inches. How could it be squeezed down to nineteen to fit in the gown? Through a lot, and I mean a lot, of pain I discovered. It was so bad before Emily was done, it not only felt like an incredible squeezing, it even seemed like I could feel my internal organs begin shifting around. At several points I almost called it quits and considered just reverting to my black commando gear, storming the party, and dragging Stefan away by his hair like in some old cavemen cartoon.

However, just when I didn't think I could take it anymore, I remembered the scene from Gone with the Wind where Mammy got Scarlett's waist down to seventeen inches. Nineteen inches suddenly didn't sound so bad.

"There. That should do it," said Emily unexpectedly, as I felt the pain at my waist start to stabilize rather than steadily increase. "Now, let's see about the gown."

However, before moving over to the bed where the gown lay, she first picked up the hoop contraption which would support the lower half of the gown. As she strapped it about my waist so that I was suddenly wearing just the corset and the exposed hoops, I felt like I belonged in some old French Revolution Era romantic comedy farce where all the ladies of the Court were running around half dressed while being chased by the palace guards.

This partial attire felt almost kinky and I wondered how Stefan would react if he could see me like this. But then I was suddenly uncertain. I thought I knew how the hundred sixty-year-old Stefan of my past would react, but how about the current seventeen-year-old human version? Would he be the same? Would he even be attracted to me after being with Katherine for the last couple of months? Of course, I did look exactly like her. But our personalities couldn't be more different. Could I fake being her long enough to get him away from the party to convince him that going with me was the right thing to do? The closer I got to coming face-to-face with this era's Stefan, the more my stomach filled with butterflies.

But then my thoughts and worries were interrupted by Emily as she helped me into the green gown.

"Miss Elena, sorry, Elena, you need to help Damon escape from Miss Katherine's clutches, too. He no more deserves ending up a vampire than Stefan does."

I had never considered saving Damon. For too long he had seemed dangerous and more than a little scary and intimidating. He seemed to have little regard for human life or anyone's life, human or vampire, besides his own and maybe, just possibly, Stefan's. I had been forced to watch as he calmly killed Lexi and so many others over the last eighteen months.

But lately he had changed, at least a little. He had shown true compassion to Rose during her final hours, something I had never seen him do before. And I knew he had slowly developed feelings for me, even though I had never given a hint that I would ever reciprocate.

And, now, back here, he wasn't yet a vampire or had done any of those things. No, the only thing he had done was innocently fall under the almost supernatural power of Katherine's charms.

I looked the witch in the eye as I slowly nodded. "I'll try. However if it comes down to being able to save only one of them, I will chose Stefan."

Emily shrugged. "That is all I ask. If you can save Damon, you should."

The conversation had distracted me while Emily had finished fastening the buttons that held the gown in place over the corset and the hoops. Now she pulled me over to the mirror mounted on the inner surface of the wardrobe's door. The mirror was relatively hazy, unlike its modern counterparts. Plus the lighting was poor. But I could still make out my image and that of the ball gown in the reflective surface. And what I saw was utterly amazing. My waist looked so tiny and all out of proportion compared to my normal appearance. The wide billowing skirt was unlike anything I had ever before worn. Next to what I was seeing, the old fashioned gown I had worn on the Founders' Day float had looked so plain and ordinary.

But what was by far the most startling change was my sudden new cleavage. The tight, tight corset, in addition to shrinking my waist, also seemed to force my breasts up and out. The tight bodice of the strapless gown seemed barely tall enough to keep my nipples from being on public display. And the tight bodice also forced the upper half of my meager breasts to almost spill over the top in a way I had never seen before. The gown definitely displayed my breasts in a way even my favorite Victoria's Secret pushup bra had never managed. Could I really go to a big party while dressed like this? I almost wasn't sure. But then I realized the one important advantage this outfit bestowed. Most men, hell, all men would be so focused on my nearly completely exposed chest as to not have sufficient brain cells available to worry about little questions like whether I was really Katherine.

While I had been staring at my reflection, Emily had knelt down and retrieved a pair of black leather shoes to replace the combat boots I had still been wearing under the slave dress. Before they disappeared under the broad skirt, I just had time to notice the modest one inch heels. If at some point this evening I was forced to run, not that running sounded like a viable option when I could barely breathe; these shoes would definitely be a better option than the four inch heels a dress like this would require back home.

Emily climbed back to her feet and scanned my body from head to toe. "You definitely can pass for Miss Katherine now. Well, except for the color of the dress and the hair, Katherine always wears hers in curls."

I could feel time slipping away, as I shook my head. "I need to get going. I'm afraid I don't have time to mess with curling my hair." Pausing for just a second, I raised my hands to my chest and gave my breasts an experimental shake, as much as anything to verify things were going to stay in place if I actually moved. Then with a grin I added, "Besides, I don't think anyone there is going to be focusing on my face or hair or the color of my dress."

"Perhaps you are right, but let me at least pin your hair up. Miss Katherine sometimes wears it that way and it won't take but a moment."

With a nod, I stepped back from the mirror to make room for Emily to reach once again into the wardrobe. I watched while the witch pulled a handful of small wooden sticks about the size and shape of chopsticks from a small drawer. Well, they looked like chopsticks except these tapered to a sharp point at each end. Then she pulled a small bottle from a different drawer and after removing its stopper, she quickly dipped both ends of the sticks into the vial.

When she glanced in my direction, I quirked an eyebrow.

"This is a vervain extract," she said in reply. "If you have to use these sticks against Katherine, aim for the heart. Even if you miss her heart, the vervain should keep her down long enough to let you get away. Ah, you do know about vervain? And have you ever tried to stake a vampire before?"

My fingers rose to the necklace Stefan had given me what seemed like a lifetime ago. "My necklace contains vervain. Stefan gave it to me a short time after we met so no vampire, including him, could ever compel me to do something I really didn't want to do. And, yeah, I have staked a vampire before."

"Good," replied Emily from behind me. After inserting the last wooden stick into my hair and then giving a final sweep of her hand to remove the last wrinkle from my gown, she stepped back. "There, I think you will pass muster."

"Thank you," I said and meant it. "I don't know how I would ever have managed without your help." I tried to pull her into a hug, but she waved me away after a pointed glance at the broad, currently wrinkle-free skirt.

I began moving towards the door, when Emily momentarily called me back. "Elena, please remember both Stefan and Damon have Miss Katherine's blood in their systems. If either of them dies in the next thirty-six hours, they will begin the transition into vampires."

This thought had been continuously in the back of my mind from the moment I had discovered it was the night of the Founders' Day Ball. What if I had come this far only to have Stefan die in some accident and end up a vampire anyway?

**End of Chapter 25**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out my blog at: duaneaakre dot wordpress dot com

Have a great day!

Duane


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter 26**

**Part 1**

Giuseppe Salvatore had waited for the thirty minutes my transformation had required. When I descended the spiral staircase, I could see his eyes gape at my appearance. If Katherine was sporting a similar gown, he must not have seen her before she left for the ball.

"You look absolutely stunning tonight, Miss Pierce. It will be my honor to escort you to the ball," he concluded with a small smile while extending his elbow. Perhaps my non-reaction to the vervain-laced drink was having an impact on his attitude.

"Thank you, Mister Salvatore," I responded with a small smile of my own before lightly resting my left hand on his arm.

He quickly led me out to the waiting carriage. Two servants sat up front on the driver's platform and two more were standing on a small platform extending across the back behind the enclosed passenger compartment. All four men were armed; obviously Giuseppe was taking my story of trouble seriously.

As I climbed the two short steps, I couldn't help but glance over to where I knew Caroline, Harry, and Lester were hidden. I didn't see anything, but gave a small nod. Things were moving forward as best as we could hope under the circumstances. Of course, the others didn't yet know this was the night of the Founders' Party where everything involving the vampires would come to a head, unless Caroline guessed from my current attire. But connecting with Stefan at the party was my responsibility; their number one priority was simply not to get caught.

As the carriage began to move and I looked at Stefan's father as he carefully avoided looking at me more than etiquette allowed, I knew my charade as Katherine wasn't over, but barely beginning.

**Part 2**

It was a short, ten minute ride to reach the Lockwood estate, where the party was being held.

I climbed down from the carriage with extreme care; wearing a broad hoop skirt without it either flipping up or becoming permanently deformed must take a lot of practice. The only time I had worn a dress remotely like this before had been while on the float during the Founders' Day parade. But that dress hadn't required a corset like this one to get into. The stays were digging so deeply into my sides it felt difficult to breathe. Maybe only an undead vampire had the strength to resist the crushing force of the corset and had the ability to not breathe it seemed to demand.

Okay, the dress did have one benefit. It had deep hidden pockets that extended down within the surrounding hoops. The EMD gun, the vampire compass, and my phone all were concealed without any unsightly bulges a more contemporary, formfitting gown would display. But I'm not sure it was a fair trade. Given a choice between this dress and being more comfortable even if it meant forgoing the devices, I think I would have taken my chances without them. But if I was to travel among the people at the Ball unnoticed, this dress was my only choice.

Giuseppe handed me out of the carriage and into the hands of the liveried butler waiting outside the Lockwood mansion.

As I reached the ground, I paused a moment to look around. Except for torches and lanterns replacing the electric lights, the Lockwood house looked remarkably the same as it had on the similar night, eighteen months earlier from my perspective, when Caroline and I had been part of that year's Mystic Falls Founders' Day Pageant.

I looked up into the stoic eyes of the Lockwood head butler. If he had seen another version of me arrive earlier in a blue gown rather than this green one, he made no comment.

"Miss Pierce, Mister Salvatore, the orchestra is set up in the ballroom. Refreshments are being served in the garden behind the house," stated the butler.

"Very good, George," responded Giuseppe. "Would you happen to know where my sons are?"

George's eyes briefly flicked in my direction before answering, "I believe Master Damon is in the ballroom. I haven't seen Master Stefan recently."

I wondered if he was tempted to say Stefan was already somewhere with me, but had the good graces not to mention the impossibility of my being in two places at one time.

"Thank you, George. Miss Pierce, may I escort you in?" said Giuseppe while once again offering his elbow.

"Thank you, sir," I said while wondering how I could ditch him before we ran straight into Katherine.

We climbed the six broad steps and then proceeded into the entry hall. A pair of maids took Giuseppe's top hat and overcoat and my wrap. I couldn't help but notice how Stefan's father's eyes were drawn to my exposed cleavage before he forced himself to look away. I suddenly began to understand part of Katherine's power in this age where she probably dressed like this a lot. These dresses would certainly attract a lot more attention than my usual casual attire of jeans and a tee shirt, or at least when my tee wasn't so damp as to be effectively transparent.

We had barely turned in the direction from which I could hear the music, when another elegantly dressed middle-aged man stepped forward.

"Giuseppe, I'm glad you have finally arrived. Before you join the festivities, I was wondering if you could join me, Jonathan, William, and a few others in the drawing room? We have several matters we need to discuss."

"Of course, Benjamin," Giuseppe replied before turning to me. "Miss Pierce, is it okay if I leave you here? Or I can escort you into the ballroom first."

"No, it's fine. I'm sure you men have important things to discuss. I can find my way alone." I was certain they were about to hold a final coordination meeting before striking against the vampires. I wondered how my drinking the vervain without any problem would impact their plan. And if my ancestor, Jonathan Gilbert were to hold his hundred fifty year younger version of the device in my pocket near me, it also would give the impression Katherine wasn't a vampire. But since Katherine never ended up trapped in the tomb under the church, it probably wouldn't make a difference anyway.

After a quick bow in my direction, the two men headed down the main hallway at a brisk pace. They entered the third door on the left while all the music seemed to be coming from a pair of open doors on the right side of the hallway.

I followed in their wake at a more sedate pace. Once the door closed behind them, I discreetly pulled out my vampire compass. Pulling the stem once to activate it, the needle quickly settled in the direction straight ahead where I could see a pair of doors leading into the back garden. As I approached the entrance to the ballroom, the needle started jittering between two locations, straight ahead towards the back garden and a second location off to one side, but still further back in the house than the ballroom. I wondered about it for a moment, but then I remembered Pearl and Anna should be here for the pageant. Since it didn't give a single flick towards the ballroom and since I wasn't ready to run into any of these vampires – particularly Katherine, I turned and passed through the double doors to my right. Perhaps if I was lucky Stefan might be here rather than with Katherine out back, not that I had seemed to have had much luck since passing through the first anomaly. Then I couldn't suppress a quick grin as I imagined telling Stefan about the loss of his beloved Porsche and then having to explain what a Porsche was thirty years before cars were even invented.

The ballroom was filled with more light than any room I had seen since arriving here in 1864. Two large chandeliers blazed with nearly fifty candles each. A dozen wall sconces sported another six candles each. Six large mirrors lined the two longest walls adding their own reflected light. The room was utterly enchanting, assuming you could ignore the resultant cloud of smoke gathering up near the ceiling. And that wasn't the only kind of smoke. Men were smoking cigars and pipes. The haze made my eyes begin to water almost as soon as I stepped into the room. I found myself wishing for the anti-public smoking laws from back home.

As I walked into the room a dance was in progress. Having been brought up as a member of one of the founding families, I had been required to take classical waltz classes the whole time I was growing up. I knew the Virginia Reel, the Lancer's Quadrille, and a few others, but I suddenly realized I barely recognized half the dance steps these people were doing. What if I had to dance? Was I going to make a complete fool of myself? And I simply knew Katherine would be an excellent dancer. Would I be tripped up in my attempt to impersonate her by a simple thing like a dance move?

I quickly skirted along the wall heading in the direction of a large group of women congregated at the room's far end. Hopefully, I could blend in with these others until I spotted Stefan or Damon. Now, as I focused my attention more on the people than the décor, it quickly began to sink in that there weren't just a predominance of women in the knot I had spotted at the far end of the room, but a predominance of women everywhere. I saw perhaps a dozen boys in the fourteen to sixteen range, a dozen men in the forty-plus category, but only five men in between and three of them were in uniform. That's when I remembered the war. Obviously, almost all the upper class young men of Mystic Falls were off fighting for the Confederate Army.

At least it made Damon easier to spot. Like all the twenty-something men and most of the younger boys and older men, he was out on the dance floor. The current dance had them swapping partners to left and right so that it was impossible to tell which one was his. All I knew for certain was that of the twenty-four women on the dance floor, none of them were Katherine.

I reached the far end of the room, where most of the women were standing, but still found myself alone. All the women moved away leaving me standing on the edge of the dance floor with an almost eight foot gap like I was contagious or something. Had Katherine managed to alienate all the other women in town? Or did her vampire aura intimidate them? Either way, it left me fully exposed, and I couldn't have been in the room for over two minutes when I knew Damon had spotted me. He gave a distinct nod of his head and I knew he would be over as soon as this dance ended.

As I let my gaze wander the room, I spotted a group of four young women and what had to be their mothers entering through a different door than the one I had used from the main corridor. The girls were all wearing white gowns and I realized they had to be the ones participating in the pageant. It took me a moment to spot the vampire Anna; she looked so much younger than the version who would date Jeremy one hundred fifty years into the future. I knew Anna had been turned at the age of fourteen, and she certainly looked it at the moment. But then this one had been living with her mother her whole life while the one I had known had been on her own for a century and a half – that certainly would change little things like attitude and body language even if the vampire's physical appearance didn't alter.

For a moment I considered moving over to talk with her, as she was the only one in the room I knew besides Damon. But then I remembered talking to her would risk revealing I wasn't Katherine. And who knew how she would respond. Just because she had a tiny, almost waif-like appearance, didn't mean she wasn't a powerful, dangerous vampire.

I was studying her from across the room so intently; it took me a moment to realize the current dance had ended. Before I could react or figure out what to say, Damon came striding up to me looking extremely dashing in his old fashioned tuxedo.

**End of Chapter 26**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out: duaneaakre dot wordpress dot com

Have a great day!

Duane


	27. Chapter 27

**Chapter 27**

Damon gazed around me for a moment as though he was looking for someone, perhaps Stefan, before turning to me with a broad smile and executing a short quick bow. "Miss Katherine, will you honor me with your hand?"

For just a second I thought he was proposing marriage and I felt a trill in my heart. Then, even as I realized this was simply how a man would ask a woman to dance back here, I wondered at my momentary reaction. Had I unknowingly developed feelings for him over the last eighteen months? Why else had my body almost wanted to shout YES?

Forcing my attention back to the present, I pondered his question. I had recognized barely half the dance moves during the previous number and risked making a fool of myself. But from what I had observed, a lot of the others screwed up at least some of the moves, too. For some reason I had it in the back of my mind that this dance would be like something from the movies or TV where the cast of professional dancers practiced for days or weeks to get the carefully choreographed and synchronized movements perfect. But this was the real world and none of these people made a living by dancing. They were here primarily to have fun and if everyone flubbed the occasional move, it was expected and no one cared or even paid attention.

"I would be honored, Master Damon," I replied, hoping my wording had been at least close to the expected phrasing, as I extended my hand and placed it in his upturned palm. His hand was damp and it matched the sheen I could see on his forehead. Dancing in this formal attire in this enclosed space filled with other bodies and hundreds of candles was obviously a strenuous activity.

He led me out onto the dance floor. We were among the first ones out there, so I knew we had at least several minutes before the next dance would begin. Damon continued to hold my hand and then asked in a tone just above a whisper.

"Have you made your decision? Is tonight going to be the night?"

I had no idea what he was talking about. I could make several guesses, but I might be wrong. Katherine would never come across as flustered, and if she didn't know the answer, she would be all coy.

"What decision would that be, Master Damon?"

I saw a shadow in his eyes like Katherine had played this game with him before and he didn't like it much. But he wasn't about to meekly give up.

"About whom you are going to turn. You know I am ready, no, it's more than that. I am looking forward to spending eternity with you."

Damon had this incredibly earnest expression on his face. He looked so young and seemed almost a different person from the vampire I had known. I suddenly knew Emily was right; I had to save Damon, too. However I also knew Katherine had torn the relationship between the two brothers apart and if I took them both with me through the anomaly, I risked doing the same thing. I couldn't simply let their dual fixation on Katherine change into a fixation on me.

"Yes, I believe tonight will be the night everything changes," I stated, although what I intended wasn't how I am sure Damon would interpret my comment. "But it can't happen quite yet, I promised Pearl I would stand with her when the pageant winner was announced. How about you meet me out in the garden, when they call for the last dance set? Things should be winding down by then and we will be able to slip away for some more serious fun."

A broad smile spread across his gorgeous face. "I will look forward to that moment with bated breath, Miss Katherine."

Then he couldn't resist lifting the hand he was still holding for a quick kiss. The back of my hand just brushed his lips, but it seemed to send a jolt of electricity through my body. For a moment my knees felt weak as I wondered how my body would react to an actual kiss from this man. I felt an attraction to the human Damon unlike any I had ever felt for the vampire Damon. It made me wonder what my reaction to meeting the human Stefan would be. Would I swoon on the spot like the heroine in some old romance novel?

I must have swayed more than I realized as abruptly Damon took a half step closer and lightly rested a supportive hand on my tiny corseted waist.

"Are you feeling well, Miss Katherine?"

I wasn't one hundred percent certain what was causing my sudden lightheadedness. It could be the intoxicating presence of the human Damon. But it could equally be the overly tight corset. Or a delayed reaction to battling the hordes of giant insects. Or the two pints of blood I had allowed Caroline to take from me less than three hours earlier. Or nearly being caught in the nuclear explosion that had ripped the heart out of modern-day London. The events of this impossible day were starting to catch up with me.

"I'm fine," I said while managing a small smile. "And I think we have reached a point where we can forego the Miss and Master, at least when we are alone." I don't know why I did it, as it would doubtlessly come back to bite me in the ass, but I leaned closer and whispered in his ear. "When I was a little girl growing up in Bulgaria, my friends called me Elena. No one has called me by that name in hundreds of years. Would you mind? When we are alone, I mean."

He pulled back just far enough so he could look into my eyes. After staring into them for a few seconds, he whispered. "I am honored you felt I was worthy of knowing your secret name. I would love to call you Elena."

It was a thrill to hear him use my real name. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest and I knew it wasn't purely due to the tight corset. It was all I could do not to pull him into a destiny-changing kiss.

"I have other secrets, more important secrets I want to share with you, too, Damon," I whispered.

I watched him lick his lips and for a second I thought he was going to initiate a kiss. But then he seemed to remember where we were as other dancers started to draw near.

"Why do you seem so different tonight, Elena," he whispered, "So much more vibrant and alive?"

BECAUSE I'M NOT SOME VILE, UNDEAD MONSTER, I wanted to shriek. But just then the orchestra began to play and everyone around us started to assume their positions.

"I'll explain everything. Later," I called, as I stepped back to assume my place in the line of women dancers while Damon was forced to step back to his own place in the other line.

What was happening to me, I wondered, as I tried to force my attention to the man by the orchestra calling the moves. I was here for Stefan. So why was I suddenly feeling this almost irresistible pull towards Damon?

**End of Chapter 27**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out: duaneaakre dot wordpress dot com

Have a great day!

Duane


	28. Chapter 28

**Chapter 28**

I'm not sure how, but I made it through the dance. Okay, the main reason I made it through was because of a young girl, I think one of the ones in the pageant. She had started the dance four places down from me in the line of women and was an infinitely worse dancer. I flubbed a couple of moves, but she was lumbering around like an elephant in a china shop, or at least when she wasn't flat on her back on the floor with her hoopskirt up in the air in a most undignified manner. Of course, it could have been worse. She was wearing these frilly white bloomers that didn't show a thing. If I had ended up in the same position, I would have shocked most of the participants with only my tiny black panties under my nineteenth century gown. Did respectable women wear black underwear back here? Hmm, perhaps the color of my underwear as much as its extremely different style is what had startled Emily when she had been helping me change.

But surviving the dance had certainly helped my self-confidence, even if I was almost gasping for breath from the tight corset. I felt ready to go in search of Stefan.

Initially, I had planned to have Damon meet me in the back garden at the start of the last dance, which would hopefully have given me time to find a moment when Stefan wasn't with Katherine to convince him to come with me. But while I was out on the dance floor, I realized we were under an even tighter time constraint than I had thought when I was just worried about getting them away before they were killed by their father with Katherine's blood in their systems.

I didn't know the exact time of the Council's move, but I knew things would ultimately end up out at Fell's Church in the cemetery. And the next anomaly was scheduled to open within sight of the church in just under two hours. We needed to be ready to be through it at the first possible moment, so Bonnie could close it before either vampires or some of the council's men stumbled through and ended up unexpectedly in Bonnie's lap. Or even worse, the council's men might not pass through, but start guarding the location so we couldn't get through any of the subsequent openings.

The only way I could see to get to Stefan immediately, if he was still with Katherine, was to have Damon convince him they needed to speak in private. And the only way to get Damon's help would be to take him into my confidence. The best way to prove to him I wasn't Katherine was to let him see both of us at once, preferably without Katherine seeing me in turn. Assuming I could convince him he wanted to be with me more than he wanted to become a vampire.

My mind was a swirl of possible plans, as Damon strode up, a big smile adorning his handsome face. When he pulled my hand to his lips for another quick kiss, most of those ill-formed ideas flitted away. More than anything, I wanted him kissing my lips not my hand.

"Let's get some fresh air, Damon," I heard myself say. "All the heat and smoke in here is stifling."

"It would be my honor to escort you to the garden where they are serving refreshments, Elena." As he spoke, he had leaned closer until the final word was whispered into my ear.

"Okay, but let's go out the front. I know a path leading around the house where we can have a few moments alone." Even though my motivation was to get us to a spot where we could see Katherine without her seeing us, I could guess how Damon would interpret my words. And suddenly I knew, if we paused along the way for a quick or not-so-quick kiss, I wouldn't mind either.

As we headed for the ballroom door, I suspected proper etiquette called for him to offer an elbow, but he just continued to lightly hold my fingers. From the corner of my eye, I saw Pearl gaze in my direction. When I turned my head more fully towards the vampire, I saw a small smile quirk one corner of her mouth and then she gave an almost imperceptible nod. I had only talked to her a couple of times during the brief interval between when she was released from the tomb and her final death, but I got the impression she was a mother first and an almost Victorian-style lady second. She only wanted long term relationships, but seemed to take an almost vicarious thrill from the way Katherine burned through men. I'm sure she was fantasizing about the depraved things Katherine would do when she got Damon alone. And I couldn't keep my thoughts away from depraved things, too. My head was suddenly feeling light again, but I'm sure it was just the overly tight corset.

However as a result, I felt almost in a daze and it wasn't until we passed through the open front door into the cooler, clean air outside that my head began to clear a little. I released a small sigh of relief; the head butler was nowhere in sight. Quickly, I turned right hoping the path I remembered around that side of the house from my visits in the twenty-first century already existed back here in the nineteenth century.

I could just hear the orchestra starting up the next number as we rounded the corner and passed from the relatively well lit area in front of the house and into the shadows. Only faint light, by modern standards, was seeping from the windows, but it was enough to find the old path. Assuming the council was still meeting, it would be behind the third set of windows I could see. I was tempted to work my way through the surrounding bushes to see if I could learn anything useful, but I couldn't do it without ruining my gown and I might still have need of it. Hopefully, we would be gone before they made their move.

"Elena," whispered Damon breaking my thoughts. Not that my thoughts had been far from him with the way his thumb had been caressing the back of the hand he still held.

I paused and looked up at him. His pale face was just visible in the surrounding gloom. But I didn't need to see it clearly to know how absolutely gorgeous it was. Without stopping to think, I stepped closer until the extremely tight bodice of my gown was pressed firmly against him and I could feel the rough wool of his jacket against the exposed upper portion of my breasts. For a second, as I felt a cool breeze on the backs of my legs, I couldn't help but think of how comical I would look to any observer with the front of my hoop skirt pressed flat against the front of my body causing the back to stick almost straight up.

But then my lips were pressed firmly against Damon's and all thoughts of hoopskirts were swept away.

The kiss seemed to go on forever as I felt his strong hands completely encircle the tiny waist enforced on me by the constricting corset. As our tongues dueled, he effortlessly lifted me into the air until I was, at first, just standing on my toes and then completely held aloft by his powerful embrace.

I had only ever really kissed two boys before in my life, Matt and Stefan. Stefan and I had done a lot more than just kiss, but it had never seemed at all like this. Of course, it might just be the fact it had now been over a month since I had last been with Stefan back in modern Mystic Falls before the six anomalies I had passed through to get here. Therefore, suddenly, I could imagine myself being lost forever in this kiss and I couldn't even imagine how much better it would be if we were both naked. I was here for Stefan, but now that Damon was in my arms I didn't know what I wanted, other than to have this kiss go on and on and on.

We probably didn't kiss for more than a minute, okay, five minutes tops, before I reluctantly forced myself to pull back and take a breath. We would have all the time in the world after we got through the anomaly. But as long as we were back here, we risked Katherine finding out and turning him or his father killing him for sympathizing with the vampires. I needed to get him somewhere safe until Katherine's blood was out of his system.

"Damon," I whispered to forestall his already begun move to return his lips to mine. "I have things I need to explain, but first I have to show you something."

"I know what I want to see, Katherine," he replied, as I felt his fingers begin to work at the row of buttons down the back of my gown.

Having him unintentionally call me Katherine and then the long familiar aggressive _vampire Damon_-like move to remove my clothing seemed to clear my head. I put my hands against his chest and pushed myself away. Then taking his hand, I started moving brusquely towards the back of the house before I lost control again.

He seemed to realize that for some reason referring to me as Katherine had been the catalyst to my reaction. "Elena, wait. I thought that is what you wanted."

We had almost reached the back corner of the house and I could hear voices in the garden beyond. It was time for our conversation before he stepped far enough out to where we might be noticed.

I pulled him close to where I could just see his eyes, but not so close I felt tempted to kiss him again. Then I spoke at a whisper.

"Damon, I'm not Katherine. My name really is Elena and I am human. I'm here to stop that bitch Katherine from turning you and Stefan into vampires."

"What are you talking about, Katherine? Is this another one of your games?"

I could see the confusion in his eyes and I could understand it. I didn't truly grasp how Katherine and I looked exactly the same until I had seen her with my own eyes. And I knew I wouldn't convince him until he saw us at the same time, too. But still I felt I needed to do a little more explaining to prepare him.

"You know Katherine's maid, Emily?" When he nodded, I continued, "Do you know she's a witch?"

"Witch?" he echoed and I could see the look of confusion in his eyes. Apparently, he didn't know that and perhaps he didn't even know witches were real. That was going to make my explanation even harder for him to comprehend.

"Witches are real and the women in Emily's family are all powerful ones. Emily's great, great, great, great granddaughter will use her gifts to open a doorway through time to allow me to travel back here.

"Damon," I continued while almost digging my nails into his hand to be sure I had his full attention. "I will first meet you and Stefan in the distant future where you will already have been vampires for centuries. And you both will be unhappy and hate your undead existence. I am here to offer you a different choice. If you stay here, you will both end up vampires before the night is over, but if you come with me to the future, you can remain human. I love you and Stefan. I want to save you from becoming vampires."

The words had tumbled out without any planning or conscious volition on my part. It was only after they were out there that I realized what I had just said. I loved him. How long had this been creeping up on me? Was it something recent or did it stretch all the way back to when I first met him?

But I didn't have time to dwell on it at the moment. I could see even more confusion in his eyes than ever. I needed to get my incontrovertible evidence in front of him.

Carefully, I pushed Damon forward until he could see the garden through a gap in the trees. I tried to stay behind him as much as possible. If Katherine spotted him, it wouldn't be a big deal. But if she spotted me, I had no idea what would happen next. Knowing how quickly she could move, I thrust my right hand into the hidden pocket in my gown until it was firmly wrapped around the butt of Abby's EMD gun.

It took me a moment to locate Katherine. She and Stefan were further back in the yard than most of the other partygoers. They were in a white gazebo and I could see Stefan playfully feeding her pieces of fruit. I could feel my blood begin to boil at the sight of my old nemesis and I felt Damon's hand tighten at the moment he had to have spotted the pair.

I glanced up into Damon's face and I could just see a vein at his temple begin to pulse at the sight of Stefan and Katherine together. It took at least five more seconds before his eyes suddenly flashed down in my direction, as he remembered there were two of us, I mean Katherine and me. His eyes darted back and forth between Katherine and me several times before he got out a strangled 'How?', as though my previous explanation was completely forgotten.

**End of Chapter 28**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out: duaneaakre dot wordpress dot com

Have a great day!

Duane


	29. Chapter 29

**Chapter 29**

"I told you. I've come back from the future to save you and Stefan before that vile creature makes you like her," I repeated.

"But . . . but . . ." was all he got out, as his eyes continued to dart between me and her.

"Do you want to spend the rest of eternity killing people for their blood or would you rather be with a living, breathing girl, who wants you as more than a temporary diversion?" I asked quietly. Damon had told me once how Katherine had made him watch while she fed on a stranger and his coachman on the road just outside of Mystic Falls. Hopefully, this human version of Damon would still feel revulsion for her act.

He hesitated for almost a minute while continuing to stare at Katherine and Stefan, who were still blissfully unaware of their current audience. Finally, he asked, "So what do you want me to do?"

"You need to go get Stefan and bring him back here without letting Katherine know what is going on. She is an old, very powerful vampire. If she finds me here, she will certainly kill me or do something even worse. And she might just kill you and Stefan, too, out of simple spite. I have certainly seen her do things like that before."

"You know her up in the future?" Damon asked, no longer seeming to question my impossible story. But then if he was willing to admit vampires existed, how much harder would witches and time-travel be?

"Yeah. I've only know of her for a little over a year, but in that time she has become the bane of my existence. She seems to take particular joy in pretending to be me and then fucking with my family and friends. It's nice to turn the tables on her for once."

Damon actually let out a startled gasp at my words and for a second I was afraid it would be picked up by Katherine's superhuman hearing. In these highly proper times, Damon had probably never heard a crude word from a woman before - and certainly not from his precious Katherine. But simply seeing her from a distance was enough to push my buttons.

I grinned up at Damon. "I think you will find my times an interesting place. Women are not helpless damsels anymore."

He continued to stare at me.

Finally, I placed my hand against his back. "Go get your brother. We have less than two hours before the doorway back to my home closes. And it is located out at the cemetery near Fell's Church, so it will take some time to get there." I gave him a small push.

I could see a thousand questions forming in his eyes, but then he merely nodded and strode out into the garden while I pulled back so my shiny silk gown would be less likely to be spotted.

Damon had covered maybe a quarter of the distance to the gazebo when I noticed a commotion closer to the back of the house. Carefully, I leaned further out from my hiding place to see what was going on; afraid it might be the start of the Council's activities. But that didn't seem to be the case. Instead I saw a striking, tall blonde move into view. She was wearing a shimmering pale yellow gown - the upper half of which seemed to be almost painted on her body before the lower portion billowed out into a wide skirt. Her face wasn't well lit and I think it wasn't until I noticed the two men with her that I realized it was Caroline, Harry, and Lester. Since I had connected with Damon, I had almost forgotten about the others. And I certainly hadn't expected them to show up here in full costume for the ball. Nor, even if they did show up, did I expect Caroline to immediately go striding off in Katherine's direction. Did she think that was me out there with Stefan? If so, she would know her mistake the second Katherine didn't recognize her.

I couldn't see anything to do but hang back. Caroline might be able to extricate them from this situation, but if I went barging out there, things couldn't do anything but escalate. I tightened my grip on my hidden weapon and then, needing to be closer to what was going on, I began working my way towards the back of the garden while staying under the cover of the trees.

Damon was on a converging path with Caroline, Harry, and Lester. They met up about thirty feet short of the gazebo. They paused for about thirty seconds, certainly less than a minute, but it was enough time to allow me to complete my trek to the back of the garden. Pausing under the closest bit of cover to the gazebo I dared risk, I could see Caroline and Damon speaking, but they were too far away from my position to hear anything. But I knew they were definitely close enough to Katherine for her to hear every word. As I watched her stare intently at Damon and Caroline, I just had to hope Caroline didn't say anything wrong. Then hoping Katherine's attention was fully absorbed, I crept forward until I was right up to the back edge of the gazebo.

Caroline, Damon, Harry, and Lester walked up to the gazebo together. They paused right before the two steps leading to the raised platform with Damon and Caroline standing slightly in front of the other two.

"Miss Katherine, Stefan, may I present Her Grace, Caroline, the Countess of Dracul. Countess, this is Miss Katherine Pierce and my brother, Stefan Salvatore," said Damon by way of introduction while giving a curt nod towards both women.

I almost burst out laughing at the Countess Dracul title, which definitely would have given me away. I knew the name Dracula wouldn't be associated with vampires for another thirty years until Bram Stoker wrote his famous novel, but using it did perfectly fit Caroline's sometimes goofy sense of humor just as the _Writer_ on her vest back at Buckingham Palace had. I just hoped she could keep a straight face.

"Countess," said Katherine almost frostily. I didn't know if she could sense Caroline was another vampire, or she simply hated having another woman in her presence who was equally striking.

Caroline nodded regally and then gesture to the two men with her. "This is my escort, Harry Windsor, and my solicitor, James Lester."

As Caroline spoke, I saw Harry fighting to keep a straight face. Lester was just displaying the faux bored expression I had seen so often over the last seventeen days.

Then Caroline's suddenly acquired accent sank in. It sounded distinctly Eastern European and unlike anything I had heard from her before. After thinking about it for a moment, I decided it had to be related to the enchanted language pebbles we both had been carrying since the first evening back in Lexi and Rachel's cabin. I had never thought of using it to add an accent rather than cancel out an accent, but it had to be possible somehow. I knew Katherine was originally from Bulgaria, which was in the same general area as Transylvania, if that is what Caroline was going for. Hopefully, Caroline would be equally convincing if Katherine decided to test her by using her native tongue. Of course, since Katherine was pretending to be a young girl from Atlanta, she would have a difficult time explaining how she knew that language.

"What brings you to Mystic Falls, Countess Dracul?" asked Stefan. "We would seem to be off the beaten path for nobility, particularly with the War."

This was the first time I had had the opportunity to hear Stefan's voice since arriving back here. And he sounded so, so young. Studying his face, it somehow looked different, too. I knew he would be turned into a vampire this very night, if I wasn't successful in getting him through the anomaly. So the one hundred sixty year old version I would first meet in the distant future wasn't a single day older, but that version struck me as a lot older. Perhaps even if his physical appearance didn't change, little things like posture and attitude did.

This Damon seemed younger, too, however not to the extent of Stefan. Perhaps being twenty-four when he was turned made a big difference compared to being seventeen like when Stefan was turned. My Stefan had attended high school with me, yet he never quite seemed to fit in. But this Stefan struck me as an utterly ordinary high school aged kid. The little voice in the back of my head suddenly wondered whether I could be happy with someone in high school after everything I had experienced during the last few weeks and months. Oh, I was only seventeen myself, but after training with Becker's commandos and battling predators and dinosaurs, I no longer felt like the same girl I had been on that long ago day when my parents had died in the car crash.

"Please, call me Caroline. Using all my titles seems so bourgeois while I am here in America," replied Caroline. "And to answer your question, Mister Lester is here looking for potential locations for my father to relocate our family and the family business. The old country is so overrun by insurrection, bandits, and creatures of the night like werewolves that America, even at war, seems like a safer place in comparison."

I saw Stefan's eyes dart to Katherine at the werewolf remark. For a second I wondered if he was going to ask if they had vampires back in Caroline's country, but instead he asked. "So what business is your father in, Caroline?"

I watched as Caroline's gaze shifted from Stefan towards Katherine.

"Oh, my father's business is not as important at this moment as who my father is. Well, technically, he is not my actual father. Ah, what is the word in English I am looking for? It is not exactly step-father, no, I think the word I am looking for is _sire_. Perhaps, Katherine, you have heard of him. His name is Niklaus and I believe he is your worst nightmare."

I had edged around the gazebo until I could see Katherine and Stefan more in profile rather than from the back. Now I could clearly see a brief shot of fear race across Katherine's face. But in an instant it was hidden behind the vampire mask of dark veins, angry red eyes, and protruding fangs.

"I will kill you and your friends and be long gone before HE is anywhere near here," Katherine rasped out in a scarily dark tone.

I took this as my cue; Caroline had her full attention, as I stepped out from where I had been hiding along the side of the gazebo.

"Actually, Katherine, or should I say Katerina Petrova, I believe at this moment it is not Klaus, but I who am your worst nightmare."

Her eyes just barely had time to boggle at my sudden unexpected _mirror-image like_ appearance before I pulled the trigger on Abby's EMD gun. I couldn't risk giving her time to recover from the shock of seeing me, so I fired with the gun still in the deep pocket of my hoopskirt. At its full-power setting it burned an eight inch diameter hole through the skirt, but I didn't care; I wasn't going back into the ball.

As Katherine's body collapsed to the floor of the gazebo, her arms and legs convulsing erratically like someone hit by a taser in a cop show - only a hundred times worse, Stefan's eyes darted between Katherine and me. I wanted to explain what was going on, but I couldn't risk taking the time. I had no idea how long the shot from the EMD would keep her down. I had to be sure she was neutralized before we could pause for explanations.

By the time I mounted the two steps, it seemed like the violence of her reaction was already decreasing. I quickly pulled the gun from the ruined remains of my dress and shot her again. Then shifting the gun to my left hand, I pulled out the first of the small vervain-laced wooden rods that had been holding my hair up.

I had just bent down to stab it through her chest when Stefan grabbed my descending arm.

"What are you doing? Who are you? How can you look exactly like Katherine?" Stefan demanded almost wildly.

**End of Chapter 29**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out: duaneaakre dot wordpress dot com

Have a great day!

Duane


	30. Chapter 30

**Chapter 30**

**Part 1**

"Stefan, let go of my arm," I tried to say calmly, but I couldn't fully suppress the heat and anger. This was the woman who had turned Damon and Stefan into vampires in the version of history I had experienced before running into the world of time anomalies. She was the one who had first slept with Stefan when it should have been me. At this moment I absolutely and utterly HATED her and was finally in a position to do something about it, if Stefan would simply release my arm. "I need to end this while she is incapacitated."

"What are you going to do? Kill her? Why?" demanded Stefan. "She hasn't done anything to hurt anyone."

I couldn't help but see the tears glistening in his eyes and my heart went out to him. I wanted to explain, but already the tremors in Katherine's body were lessening.

"She is going to turn you and Damon into vampires and I am not going to let that happen again," I replied fiercely.

"Again?" he echoed with a confused look on his face.

But before either of us could say anything more, we heard loud shouts from up by the house. And then shots began ringing out. The Council had chosen this moment to make their move. And if Jonathan Gilbert was still here, his vampire compass would point out Caroline and Katherine as vampires. We had to go.

I turned my eyes down to Katherine. She was still convulsing and her limbs were out of control, but I could see her eyes on me and they were filled with hate.

"Katherine, you idiot, you turned too many people. The town fathers are going to round up and destroy all the vampires tonight. So you have a choice to make. You can either try to follow us and be swept up by their men or you can run." I paused to wave the gun in front of her eyes. "The choice is up to you."

I gave the arm Stefan was still restraining a hard jerk. It may have been my words that implied I was going to let Katherine go or it might have been the gunfire, but Stefan released his grip.

I couldn't risk Stefan stopping me again if I took the hard swing necessary to penetrate to her heart, so I settled for stabbing the pencil-thin stake through her exposed china white shoulder.

The tendons in Katherine's neck bulged as she fought back the scream the vervain was trying to force out of her. She had to know if she drew attention before she was able to get away, tonight would be the end for her.

As I climbed back to my feet, I pulled on the lapels of Stefan's waistcoat. "Stefan, we have to go now, before we get caught up in the vampire hunt. Your father intends to kill you and Damon for collaborating with the vampires."

Stefan's eyes continued to dart between Katherine, lying on the floor squirming in agony, and me.

"How can there be two of you?" he demanded, as though my comment about his father's plans hadn't even registered.

Men were starting to advance across the garden. I could see Harry had pulled his submachine gun from wherever he had been hiding it within his clothes.

"Elena, we don't have time for this," stated Caroline.

"Stefan, do you want to spend your life with a cold, undead vampire or with a living, breathing girl?" I asked in almost the same words I had used before with Damon. Then, without waiting for a response, I leaned in for a quick kiss - hoping the heat of my lips might be an even stronger argument than my words.

I pulled back from the kiss sooner than I would have preferred and almost dragged the dazed Stefan down the steps. Damon shot me a blistering glare, but it couldn't be helped. We had to get away now; we could worry about sorting things out later. And a short, five second kiss with Stefan hadn't in anyway reduced the desire I still felt for Damon. At the moment I think I was just as confused about who or what I truly wanted as either of the Salvatore brothers.

Stefan numbly followed me. We had just reached the bottom of the stairs and had turned to head into the shelter of the trees when I heard a hissed 'bitch' from Katherine. I glanced back and saw her trying to reach the small stake protruding from her shoulder, but her arm still wasn't fully under her control from the double hit from the EMD gun and the vervain coursing through her system.

When I saw her eyes on mine, I threw a quick wink. "No, payback's a bitch, you shouldn't have messed with me in the future," I tossed at her before dragging Stefan away. By now, I knew her well enough to know that cryptic comment would drive her crazy since she had no idea I was from the future or how I could look exactly like her. Perhaps I should have implied I was a future version of herself somehow magically made human again. Now that would have really driven her crazy!

**Part 2**

Harry fired off a burst from his submachine gun as we raced for the cover of the trees. I saw how he aimed high to minimize the chances of actually hitting anyone. I knew they didn't have any weapons like that back here, but they did have Gatling Guns so the men with guns by the house should have understood the significance of the rapid staccato burst of rounds. And for a few seconds it seemed to work as all the guns we had been hearing fell silent. Then just as the first of us had reached the trees, a shot rang out. I heard a brief shout of pain as someone behind me stumbled and crashed to the ground.

Even as I ducked behind a thick tree trunk, I glanced back. Harry was sprawled on the ground. I could see him trying to get back to his feet, but then he fell back to his knees. He was clutching at his right shoulder so I assumed that was where he had been hit even though in the almost total darkness under the trees and with the dark colored waist coat he was wearing; I couldn't see any blood to tell how serious it was. But the cemetery was over two miles away and we had less than ninety minutes to get there if we were going to make the next opening of the anomaly. And the Council's men would be scouring the intervening distance for vampires and then taking them to Fell's Church only a few hundred feet away from our destination. We would be hard pressed to reach the anomaly in time without one of our party being wounded.

A blur of yellow raced by me heading back to where Harry was in the process of sagging to the ground. Before his head hit, Caroline was there gathering the much bigger Prince up into her arms. Then while holding him, she managed to bend down and grab the dropped machine gun before racing back deeper into the trees.

I followed in her wake, but I was nowhere near as fast as the vampire even with the heavy, awkward burden Caroline was carrying. And the deeper we penetrated into the thickening underbrush the more annoying my large hoopskirt became. It was catching and snagging on seemingly every branch and bush. My mind jumped to all the old Westerns I had ever seen where the trackers followed by watching for bent grass and twigs or the occasional bit of thread. My skirt was leaving an unmistakable trail through these woods; if any of the Council's men cared to look for it. I was suddenly wishing I had my commando outfit back.

We plunged on for another ten minutes making enough noise to wake the dead or at least the undead, before I finally caught up to Caroline in a small clearing. She had leaned Harry's back up against a tree trunk and was now using her fangs to bite at her own wrist. As soon as the blood began flowing, she forced her wrist against Harry's lips. Her blood would either heal his gunshot wound, if he lived, or turn him into a vampire if he didn't. I hoped he lived because the last thing we needed at the moment was a newbie vampire Prince, or maybe that should be newbie vampire King.

The others of our small party were all taking this opportunity to catch their breath, but none of them were having a harder time of it than me. The corset was feeling like it was literally killing me. I had to get out of it, if I was going to be able to do any more running tonight. I couldn't reach the buttons in the back of the dress which would have to come off first to get to the corset. I looked at my choices for who to get to help me since I was about to strip down to my panties, if I removed both the dress and the corset. My first choice would have been Caroline, but she was still working on Harry. That left Damon, Stefan, and Lester. I wasn't quite ready to let Damon disrobe me in the current situation. And I certainly wasn't ready to let this version of Stefan do it, which just left Lester. He tried so hard to always display that famous British reserve; hopefully he would maintain it through the next couple of minutes.

I moved over to where he was leaning against a tree, still breathing hard. Then I turned around so my back was towards him. "Mister Lester, could you undo the buttons on my dress, please. I have to get out of this corset. I can barely breathe when I am standing still and you wouldn't believe how nearly impossible it is to breathe and run. And I'm afraid there might be more running in our immediate future. Plus running in this stupid gown is very awkward, as well."

He straightened behind me and I could feel his fingers beginning to work at the buttons.

"Are you sure this little trip was worth it, Miss Gilbert? I mean the Prince has been shot and he is probably going to die since they barely have the most rudimentary of medical skills back here, which we probably can't avail ourselves of anyway. And even if he survives until we reach the anomaly, it isn't going to lead us to anywhere with a modern hospital. You may have just killed the future King of England."

"He's not dead yet," I replied. "Caroline may be able to save him."

"How?" the older man demanded. Obviously he been watching and not fully understanding what Caroline was doing, as he continued, "By turning him into a vampire like her? That's just what our little ragtag group needs – another vampire. We should never have come here, but should have focused our attention on fixing the future."

He had the back of the gown and enough of the skirt undone for me to struggle out of the dress. I took a moment to retrieve the contents from the hidden pockets and set them on a nearby log before pulling the broad skirt up and over my head. It was difficult while still wearing the constrictive corset, but with freedom from the almost hated device now hopefully only seconds away, I made myself hurry.

I held the remains of the dress in front of me to cover my fully exposed breasts as Lester began working on the laces of the corset. As he worked I responded to his questions.

"Vampire blood will greatly accelerate the healing of a human, if he isn't too far gone and I don't think Harry is. Oh, if he dies within the next twenty-four hours with her blood in his system, he will begin the transition, but otherwise he should be okay. So I don't think coming here to rescue my boyfriend before he was turned into a vampire cost us anything, assuming we can make it back through the anomaly."

I couldn't stop the sigh of relief that came when the corset was completely loose and I took the first deep breath in what felt like hours. As the corset fell to the ground, I found myself standing there wearing just panties and the hoop contraption while still holding the dress in front of me.

Glancing over my shoulder, I looked at Lester. "Mister Lester, could I borrow your coat, please?"

His eyes had been staring at my exposed back, but then they quickly swung up to mine. I saw a chagrin expression roll across his face, as he realized he should have already offered it up. He quickly pulled his black coat off and wordlessly handed it to me.

I shrugged into the coat and pulled the front closed before dropping the gown to free my other hand to help fasten the jacket's buttons. Then I unstrapped the hoop contraption which had been supporting the ball gown.

Feeling one hundred percent, no, one thousand percent better and ready to run if it again became necessary, I took a moment to glance down at myself. The black coat had tails. Wearing just it and my black panties, I realized all I needed was a top hat to look like Zatanna from the comics. Of course, it was Bonnie, not me, who had all the magic.

**End of Chapter 30**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out: duaneaakre dot wordpress dot com

Have a great day!

Duane


	31. Chapter 31

**Chapter 31**

I quietly headed over to where Caroline knelt with Harry's head in her lap. As I went, I could feel Damon and Stefan's eyes on me. I'm sure they had both seen Katherine in less, probably totally naked more than once, but they had probably never seen her wearing a black coat and black panties.

To me, wearing something out-of-the-ordinary always seems at least slightly erotic. And I and Stefan, the twenty-first century version I mean, had played dress-up games on more than one occasion. My favorite was when Stefan pretended to be Maximus from _Gladiator_ and I played Lucilla. I don't know where he had acquired the old Roman breastplate, but when he wore it, it just drove me insane.

For a moment I was tempted to divert my path from Caroline to Stefan and Damon to amp up the sexual tension a notch, but then reminded myself we were on a tight schedule. Trying to keep that thought in mind, I carefully made sure the tails of Lester's coat were covering my butt as I knelt down. My panties weren't quite of the thong variety, but they did leave a lot of cheek exposed.

"How's he doing?" I asked, as I took in the blood on Caroline's wrist and hands and on Harry's face and shoulder. His eyes were closed; but based on the expression on his face, he didn't seem to be in any pain. "We need to be on our way soon, if we are going to reach the anomaly when it first opens."

Caroline moved to stroke Harry's red hair, but then stopped short when she noticed her hands were coated with blood. Instead, she grabbed the hem of the green ball gown I was still carrying and tore off a strip, wiped her hands, and started wiping at Harry's face.

"He should be coming around soon. And if he doesn't, I can carry him."

Just then the subject of our hushed conversation began to stir. After a few seconds his eyes slowly opened.

I had only been up close to Harry in daylight for a few minutes altogether during our brief stop in the dinosaur era and then again during our equally brief stop in the Mystic Falls of 123,000 years ago. He had had bright, intelligent eyes, but if you had asked me their color, I wouldn't have been able to answer with any certainty. They had probably been blue or maybe a hazel shade of green.

But his eyes were suddenly nothing mundane like blue or green. The irises were such a bright shade of silver as to look almost chrome-plated. Even out here in the middle of the night in a dimly lit woods, it was like they were parabolic mirrors that drew in every bit of light in the area and reflected it back straight into mine like some powerful searchlight. I had NEVER seen or felt anything like it.

It seemed to take forever to pull my gaze away and look over at Caroline. Her eyes were fixed on his and her reaction looked even stronger than mine. She looked to be utterly in a trance. The closest thing I had ever seen to the expression on her face was when I had witnessed Damon or Stefan compel someone. What was going on with Harry?

Before I could voice a coherent thought, Harry abruptly sat up. As he moved, his eyes passed out of my field of view and it abruptly felt like my brain went from barely a crawl back up to its normal speed. Before I could stop myself, I had climbed back to my feet and moved a good five steps back.

"Sire, what's with your eyes?" I asked. Why was it suddenly impossible for me to call him Harry?

He looked in my direction and once again it felt almost like the brilliant silver orbs were drawing me in. The distance helped, so I took several more steps back.

"Please, can you look away, Your Majesty?" I almost begged.

He slowly and gingerly rose to his feet as though uncertain of his strength. Thankfully, he did look away while he was doing it. Then he gingerly probed his wounded shoulder. After a moment, he stripped off his coat and then his shirt. The wound looked completely healed. No, more than that, if not for the coating of blood you wouldn't have guessed he had been shot less than fifteen minutes earlier.

However I barely noticed, my full attention was focused on his newly exposed physique. If you had asked me to describe him only five minutes earlier, I would have said he was a very fit six foot two and weighed about one hundred ninety pounds. But now he seemed at least six inches taller and was big and ripped - well beyond the already impressive vampire versions of Damon and Stefan. My eyes flicked down to the cuffs of his pants, but the pants weren't suddenly too short, so the impression he was bigger and taller had to be some kind of optical illusion I didn't understand.

"What happened? The last thing I remember was being shot, but obviously I am not shot now," he asked. His voice, too, seemed to have changed; it was deeper and much more commanding. My body almost wanted to kneel down before him.

Then I managed to tear my eyes away and look at Caroline. She was actually on her knees looking up at him with an expression of utter adoration on her face. Before this, her attitude had been the normal flirtatious one she displayed around most cute guys, but now the look was something else entirely.

"Caroline fed you some of her blood to heal you, sir," I said in reply to his question. Answering him had almost felt like something I was compelled to do.

He stared at me for a minute and then muttered a 'damn' before starting to put his blood soaked shirt and coat back on. When he looked away, I realized I was now kneeling, too. What was going on?

"Please, Your Majesty, what's happening?" I asked, but then almost cringed at the thought of my words drawing his eyes back to me. I felt just barely in my right mind when he wasn't looking at me.

"The vampire blood has activated my Royalty Gene. In addition to advanced strength, fighting, and healing abilities, it also grants the rightful King power over all supernatural creatures in his presence – vampires, werewolves, and witches. I don't understand why it is affecting you, too, Elena."

Royalty Gene? I had never heard of anything like that. But it did explain how he knew about vampires before Caroline told him about herself. But if it only gave him power over supernatural creatures, then why was it affecting me, too? Then I realized it had to be because I was the Petrova doppelgänger. If my blood was needed to release Klaus' werewolf side, it must make me some kind of supernatural creature. Too bad it didn't give me anything useful in return like the speed and strength of vampires and werewolves or the magical abilities of witches.

"I'm a Petrova doppelgänger, Sire," I stated.

The King's eyes jerked to me for a moment before he remembered and forced himself to look away.

"Do you know Niklaus?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied. "How do you know him?"

"I don't know him, I only know of him. He and his pursuit of the Petrova doppelgänger are documented in the secret royal histories the five highest ranking males in the line of succession are required to study. Henry the Seventh nearly trapped and destroyed him in 1493, but Niklaus managed to escape. To the best of my knowledge he hasn't set foot in England since."

Did I finally have a weapon in the person of the King that could defeat Klaus?

"Do all Kings have the Royalty Gene, Your Majesty?" I asked. "I mean like the King of Spain now or all the various kings of places like France and Austria in the past?"

The King shook his head.

"So why would just the King of England have this special ability?"

"It follows back along the English line of succession until you reach Cnut the Great, who reigned from, ah . . ." he paused and I could see his lips move as he seemed to silently repeat some memorization mantra to himself. "Who reigned from 1018-1035 AD. Cnut was also King of Denmark, King of Norway, and King of Parts of Sweden. It was with him that the Royalty Gene made the jump from the Kings of Norway to the Kings of England. Before that it had been part of the Norwegian Royal line back to Harald Fairhair, who was the first King of Norway and reigned from 872-930 AD.

"Harald had twelve sons and the latter part of his reign was a nearly endless period of strife as many of them jockeyed for power. In an attempt to achieve peace, three of the youngest sons were banished to the Viking settlements in the New World. However it didn't work out as Harald had hoped and stories soon started reaching him of their dealings with supernatural creatures like vampires and werewolves and their plans to create an army of them to gain his throne.

"Ultimately, Harald had to lead his own army to the New World to defeat them. It is not clear who Harald made a deal with - most likely Druidic Mages or possibly the Old Norse Gods. Anyway, someone gifted him with power over supernatural creatures. Harald defeated his rebellious sons and killed most of their vampire and werewolf retainers, but the Original vampires, Mikael and his children, and some of the werewolves escaped. Harald's rightful descendants have been heir to his powers ever since."

I had only known about the Originals for a few months – since I had first encountered Rose. I had never heard of an original named Mikael or some long forgotten battle involving vampires and Viking Kings, but nothing Harry had just said was inconsistent with what I knew, not that I knew very much.

Slowly, I realized Lester had stepped up beside where I still knelt. It reminded me of how long we had been in this small glade. If we were going to make it to the anomaly in time, we needed to get moving.

"Sire, the anomaly, it opens in barely an hour and we still have a long ways to go."

He nodded before turning from where he had stood gazing off into the darkness for most of this conversation, which had been the only thing seeming to let my brain function halfway normally.

"Arise, Caroline, Elena. Accept my Geas and in return you shall have my support against the witch, Helen Cutter, and the Original, Niklaus. Now, I return your free will and henceforth you shall refer to me as Harry."

It felt like something shifted inside of me. My head was suddenly clear and it was like I could truly think for myself for the first time since Harry had opened his eyes. I could still feel an urge to support him, but now it felt more like something I wanted to do rather than something I had to do.

"Thank you, Harry. It is nice to feel like my normal self again," I stated.

Caroline nodded, "Me, too." It was the first words the vampire had spoken since Harry had opened his eyes.

Harry smiled. "Ladies, shall we be on our way?" He gestured in the general direction we had been heading.

Caroline bowed her head in his direction, but then I saw her grin as she stepped up and they headed off side-by-side. It seemed like the old, playful Caroline was back as well.

**End of Chapter 31**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out: duaneaakre dot wordpress dot com

Have a great day!

Duane


	32. Chapter 32

**Chapter 32**

**Part 1**

"What just happened?" asked Lester, who was still beside me.

I gestured for Lester to walk with me. As I started moving, I glanced back to verify Stefan and Damon were following. They both had confused expressions on their faces, much like Lester.

"Mister Lester, how much do you know about vampire lore?" I asked.

"Ah, not a sodding thing would sum it up pretty accurately, I think. But it sounds like I should."

I nodded. "A family of vampires was created by a powerful witch and all the rest of the vampires in the world are descended from them. This family was originally from somewhere in Eastern Europe, but had relocated to the New World in the 10th Century before they were turned. And if Harry's story of the first Viking King is correct, it had to have been early in the 10th Century. I have only met two members of the original family of vampires, Elijah and Klaus, or Niklaus as Harry refers to him. Elijah comes across as the more civilized of the two, but make no mistake, neither of them have much regard for normal humans."

"You're saying these vampires have been alive for over a thousand years?" asked Lester.

"The correct term is undead, not alive," I said with a grin. Then my smile faded, as I continued. "But, yes, they have been around for over a thousand years. Katherine, the vampire who looks like me, is over five hundred years old."

"And how is it that you and her look exactly alike? I have known a number of identical twins down through the years and no two of them have ever looked as alike as you two."

I shrugged. "I only know bits and pieces of this part of the story. Somehow the blood of one of my distant ancestors was involved in both the creation of the vampires and a special curse put on Klaus. He is really only a half-brother of the other original vampires. He has a different father who happened to be a werewolf, so he has both the vampire and the werewolf in him. My ancestor's blood was used in a curse that has kept his werewolf side dormant. It takes the blood of one of us to break the curse. Klaus has always wanted to break the curse for once it is lifted, he will be much more powerful than the other original vampires, who are themselves more powerful than ordinary vampires. However it can't be the blood of just any member of my family, but only special ones like me or Katherine. Therefore, since we both look alike, I suspect we also look exactly like our original ancestor, too. Anyway, our blood only works while we are human. Klaus tried for Katherine's blood five hundred years ago, but she managed to get herself turned into a vampire before he got to her."

"If you have met Klaus, then he must be after your blood, too," stated Lester with a burst of logic I would have said was beyond him when I first met him. But I had come to realize he was a lot sharper than he normally let on.

"Unfortunately, he already has my blood. About three weeks before I passed through the first anomaly, he drained my blood and killed me during a ritual to restore his werewolf nature."

Lester turned and stared at me. "You don't look dead. Or do zombies come into the story now, too?"

I shook my head and felt my eyes tear up. And that had never happened when thinking about John before. "My . . . my father used a special magic spell to bring me back. But the powerful magic needed to bring someone back from the dead always comes with a high price. It required him to sacrifice his own life."

"I'm sorry, Elena."

I found myself wiping at my eyes. And thinking about my eyes made me think about Harry's eyes again. "Mister Lester, did Harry's eyes look different to you? I mean after he woke up back in the glade."

"No. Why? Do they look different to you?"

"So they don't suddenly look silver, an almost mirror-like chrome version of silver?"

Lester shook his head. "It's hard to tell in the low light out here, but I would say they are still their normal blue. Certainly, they weren't like silver mirrors from one of those bad sci-fi shows Connor is always watching," he concluded with a shudder.

I wondered why it felt like Lester had more intimate knowledge of Connor's TV-viewing habits then most bosses would know about their underlings. But before I could pursue it, I saw both Caroline and Harry drop to the ground in front of us. And Caroline quickly turned and put a finger to her lips in the universal signal for silence. They must have spotted some of the Council's men. Or knowing our luck, something even worse.

**Part 2**

I pulled Abby's EMD gun from my coat pocket before moving up at a crouch to where Harry and Caroline lay behind a large evergreen tree. I quietly stretched out on the ground next to Caroline. The lowest branches of the old tree were just high enough to give a clear view of the glade beyond, if you were in a prone position.

Three men had just entered the glade from the far side about one hundred feet from our position. Once they stepped more fully out into the open where the light from the quarter moon could reach them, I could see two were carrying rifles while the man in the center had what looked like a stake in his right hand and something small cupped in his left. He was staring intently down at whatever was in his left hand as he slowly moved forward while sweeping it from side to side.

Abruptly his arm stopped sweeping and was pointing unerringly in our direction. That's when I realized the man had to be my ancestor, Jonathan Gilbert, and he had to be holding the vampire compass. It still boggled my mind a little that I could have the exact same device in my pocket. It seemed like it should break some basic law of the universe for the device to be in his hand and my pocket at the same time. But then the whole idea of time anomalies should break some basic laws, too. However we were most definitely here in the Mystic Falls of 1864.

"That has to be my ancestor, Jonathan Gilbert," I whispered to Caroline and Harry. "He is holding the vampire compass, a device that will point to the nearest vampire, which would be you, Caroline, at the moment."

"Shit," whispered Caroline. "There's a device that identifies vampires?"

I nodded. "Jonathan Gilbert invented it. Although I'm not sure it worked until Emily Bennett put a spell on it. It has been in the Gilbert family ever since. In fact, I still have it; it's in my pocket."

"You have a device that identifies vampires and never told me?" Caroline asked incredulously.

"You knew about it at one time, back before you were turned, but Damon compelled you to forget. Once you were turned, there didn't seem to be any point in telling you. It wouldn't do you any good. If you tried to use it, it would just point at yourself."

The men across the glade had started to move in our direction and were now about seventy-five feet away.

"I need to get out of here," stated Caroline. "I'm putting the rest of you in danger. I'll lead them away and then meet you at the anomaly."

I shook my head. "The woods are full of men hunting vampires. It's too dangerous."

"Let me go speak to them. Perhaps I can convince them to leave our party alone," stated Harry with the ring of authority his voice had carried ever since he had received Caroline's blood. Of course, I couldn't be certain if the feeling of authority I got from him wasn't just some lingering aftereffect of my earlier experience. It was like some voice in my head was still shouting at me to believe whatever he said.

But we never had a chance to find out if Harry could be as commanding with normal humans. He was just rising to his feet when Jonathan Gilbert suddenly swung sharply around; the hand holding the vampire compass abruptly pointing back in the direction from which they had come.

Then I saw six extremely fast shapes emerge from the shadows in that direction. They moved so fast, I barely got a good-enough look to realize they were man-shaped before they fell upon the three men near the center of the glade. Jonathan Gilbert and the men with him were being attacked by vampires.

Quickly, I raised the EMD and fired a couple of hurried shots. The distance was pretty long and the hand weapon wasn't that accurate, the best I could hope for was to distract the vampires for a moment. The weapon wouldn't put a vampire down at this distance, but also shouldn't kill any of the humans either, if I hit them by mistake.

"Come on, we need to save them," I shouted, as I scrambled to my feet and raced around the side of the sprawling pine tree.

My shots must have at least registered with the vampires, as three of them had turned and were staring in my direction. But the other three had the men on the ground and were obviously feeding.

"No," I shouted and fired the weapon again. This time one of the vampires jerked back and then crashed to the ground, his arms and legs spasming. But the other two just broke into an impossibly fast run towards me.

In barely two seconds the pair were almost upon me. I didn't even have time to rotate the EMD the bare ten degrees necessary to get it lined up with one of them. Then, with the nearest one less than seven feet from me, I heard a single word from behind me.

"Stop," commanded Harry with the full power of his special royal gift. Instantly every muscle in the bodies of the two vampires froze. Their momentum carried them forward, but they both tumbled to the ground unable to even raise their arms to break their fall.

They ended up on the ground right at my feet, which was a good thing, because my body was frozen in place, too. I couldn't so much as twitch a muscle. All I could do was stare straight ahead to where the other three vampires also appeared to have been struck motionless in the act of feeding on Jonathan and the two men with him.

I must have been frozen for at least twenty seconds before Harry stepped forward and lightly touched my arm.

"Elena, I release you," was all he had to say before I abruptly regained use of my body. The two vampires at my feet remained frozen in place.

It was extremely disconcerting to know someone could completely immobilize me with a single word. More than disconcerting, it was hugely annoying to learn my supernatural gift had another big drawback while the gift had yet to demonstrate a single discernible benefit to me.

Forcing my attention back to the present situation, I quickly stepped around the two fallen vampires. "We need to see about Jonathan Gilbert. He has to survive tonight, as he hasn't yet married. I have no idea what will happened to me, if he dies without having children."

As I ran forward, I realized both Harry and Caroline were pacing me. Glancing back, I saw Lester, Damon, and Stefan just emerging from the trees.

Reaching the three fallen humans and the frozen-in-place vampires, I knew we were too late. The throats of all three men had been torn out and from their extremely pasty complexions, I knew most, if not all of their blood had been drained.

I fell to my knees beside the man who should have been my great, great, great grandfather. Would I simply fade away now that he would never have children?

**End of Chapter 32**

Author's Note:

If you would like to learn more about my other stories, be sure to check out: duaneaakre dot wordpress dot com

Have a great day!

Duane


	33. Chapter 33

**Chapter 33**

**Part 1**

"Elena, snap out of it. He's wearing the ring," I heard Caroline say as though from a great distance.

I don't know how long I had been kneeling there staring at Jonathan Gilbert's lifeless corpse. It could have been five seconds. It could have been an hour. It wasn't until she repeated herself a second time and then lifted his hand and nearly shoved it into my face that my brain started functioning again.

Of course, if Emily had already enchanted his special vampire compass so it would actually work, she also would have enchanted his ring, the ring Jeremy wore back home, so he couldn't die by supernatural means.

With a deep breath I forced myself to sit up straighter from where I had been hunched over Jonathan's body. Several times since we had first arrived here in 1864 Mystic Falls I had thought it would be cool and interesting to talk to my famous ancestor, well famous within the small circle of _in-the-know_ descendants of the Founders' Council. But now it seemed unlikely to happen. I knew from experience it would be at least several hours until he would revive and if we made the next opening of the anomaly, we would be long gone before then. And at the moment I had no desire to linger here one second longer than absolutely necessary. Many more vampires were wandering these woods. The Council's men were shooting at anything that moved. Katherine could also be out here somewhere. Damon and Stefan had her blood in their systems and if they died in the next few hours, it would nullify all our efforts of coming here. Suddenly a T. Rex or two didn't seem nearly as scary as these woods.

"We need to get his body under cover, so someone doesn't stumble across it before he recovers. I don't know if anyone is aware of his ring besides him and Emily. If he revives in front of the Council's men, he will probably be killed for being a supernatural creature."

Caroline nodded, as she stooped to pick up the body. "I'll hide him in the trees. The rest of you get moving."

For a moment I took in the incongruous sight of Caroline still in the bright yellow 19th century ball gown stained with large splotches of her and Harry's blood holding the large man in her arms. When had my life taken the turn into the totally bizarre? Was it when the Porsche had passed through the first anomaly or way back when I learned Stefan, the 21st century Stefan, was a vampire?

It wasn't until I saw Caroline race away at a speed almost too great to follow with my eyes that I realized I had been kneeling there long enough so Lester, Damon, and Stefan had caught up. As I climbed back to my feet, Harry knelt down and whispered into each of the frozen vampires' ears. When he was finished, they rose slowly and went shambling off with an awkward, ungainly gait looking more like zombies than vampires.

When Harry climbed back to his feet, I shot him a quizzical look.

"I told them to go to Fell's Church since that's where the other vampires are being taken. I also told them they will be wading through waist deep molasses the whole way and that they can't attack or hurt anyone. Good enough?"

I nodded. Harry's eyes still glowed like spotlights, but at least they no longer exerted the hold over me they had earlier.

Harry gave me a brief smile and turned towards Damon. "Mister Salvatore, would you mind walking with me and leading the way to the cemetery? I have something I would like to discuss with you." When Damon nodded after a glance in my direction, the new King gestured in the general direction we had been heading.

After a quick glance of his own in my direction, Lester moved up along the other side of Harry. Obviously, the older man was trying to give me some time alone with Stefan, who was the whole reason I had dragged our little group to 1864. And I appreciated the gesture; I hadn't had a moment alone with him and had barely had any time to even think about him in the thirty minutes since I had first spotted him in the gazebo.

But now that we had a few minutes, I suddenly didn't have the slightest clue what to say. All I could think to do was start at the beginning.

"We never had a chance to be properly introduced," I began. "My name is Elena, Elena Gilbert."

Stefan gave a cautious nod. "I gathered that from what the others have been calling you. And Damon has been trying to tell me some crazy story about you being from the future."

I nodded as we walked. And then almost without realizing it, I reached out my left hand and intertwined my fingers with his. It felt so natural and right. I had almost forgotten how much I missed his touch in the month from my perspective that had passed since I had last seen him up in 2011.

"I am from the year 2011. I will first meet you when you are one hundred sixty one years old," I said before pausing to look at him for a moment. The lighting out here in the woods was poor, but I could still make out his face. And it looked terribly young. Suddenly, it felt like I was the one who was centuries old. Stefan's life, this Stefan's life, had been utterly ordinary until meeting Katherine and learning about vampires only a few weeks earlier. But I had known about vampires for over eighteen months and had dealt with Elijah and Klaus, who were both a lot scarier than Katherine. And I had traveled through six anomalies with history seeming to change and morph every time. I had battled dinosaurs, giant snakes, and predators from the future. I felt way older than my seventeen years.

"One hundred sixty one years old?" echoed Stefan, as though he couldn't grasp what I was saying.

"If you hadn't come with me, you would have been turned into a vampire tonight. You would have spent almost one hundred fifty years as a vampire before we would have met in the distant future. You will have to trust me, but you would have been much happier never having become a vampire."

He looked at me and I could see the uncertainty and confusion in his eyes.

I stopped walking and pulled Stefan around until we were standing face-to-face, separated by less than eight inches. "I love you, Stefan. I have come back through time so I could be with you before you became a vampire, so I could prevent you from becoming a vampire." For just a moment I realized my first few words seemed to be almost a perfect echo of the words Kyle Reese had said to Sarah Connor in the first Terminator movie. God, I had watched way too much TV down through the years.

Having run out of words to press my case, I stepped closer, raised myself up onto my toes, and pressed my lips to his. At first, I didn't feel the near electric tingling I had felt when I had kissed Damon, but the longer the kiss stretched, the more I could feel my body begin to respond. It wasn't like kissing the vampire Stefan, this Stefan was still very tentative as he probably had only ever kissed Katherine before unlike the Stefan I had known who had doubtlessly kissed hundreds of women in the century and a half he had been a vampire before we finally met.

I think I wouldn't have minded if that kiss had gone on forever, but we were eventually interrupted by a sharp, quiet hiss. As I pulled my lips away from Stefan and opened my eyes, I realized Caroline was standing right next to us. Immediately, before I could say or do anything, Caroline grabbed both my and Stefan's arms and twisted us around until we were facing in the direction Damon and the others had gone. Then she gave us a brisk shove to get us moving.

"These woods are crawling with people – vampires and humans. We need to focus on reaching the anomaly. You can get all kissy-face later," whispered Caroline with both a trace of rebuke and humor in her tone.

**Part 2**

It took us another thirty minutes to reach the cemetery and I spent the whole time talking quietly with Stefan. I told him about our old lives up in the future. I told him about the horrific things I knew he had done as a vampire during the upcoming hundred and fifty years including slaughtering hundreds of people. I knew I did it to convince him it was better for him to stay human and come with me to the future than stay here and end up a vampire.

But even as I spoke, my heart was in a sudden quandary. I had travel back in time to retrieve Stefan, but I still couldn't get out of my mind the time I had spent at the ball with Damon. Dancing with him, kissing him had felt so good and so right. How could I want both brothers so much?

Almost brusquely I forced thoughts of the Salvatore brothers to the back of my mind. Has Caroline had said earlier, it could wait for later. At the moment, the cemetery was crawling with people. From the shadows we watched as two more wagons loaded with men and captured vampires trundled passed our position and headed towards the front of the modest church.

Once it was clear, I pulled my iPhone from my pocket. Shielding the screen as best I could within Lester's dark coat, which I was still wearing over just my panties, I briefly turned the phone on so I could check the time.

"If Bonnie is on schedule, the anomaly should open in less than five minutes," I whispered before jamming the phone back into the jacket pocket.

"Then we better work our way around closer to where it will open, assuming it will open in the same place," said Caroline. "Follow me."

It was hard to believe anyone could creep stealthily passed all the people around while wearing a bright yellow dress with a broad hoop skirt. But if anyone could, it would be the vampire Caroline.

Caroline led the way along the fence surrounding the cemetery for several hundred feet until we reached a spot where some large bushes would give some cover as we climbed over the fence. I couldn't help but notice the large flash of pale white skin that was exposed as Caroline crawled over the fence. She obviously wasn't wearing any frilly bloomers under her gown either. And I could tell I wasn't the only one to notice. All four pairs of male eyes in our little group were unconsciously drawn to her long, fully exposed legs. I thought I was going to have to pinch some of them to get them moving again.

After we all made it across the fence, we started to creep across the sprawling cemetery. We used trees, bushes, headstones, whatever cover we could find. Towards the end we were helped by the arrival of the six vampires from our earlier encounter with Jonathan Gilbert. As they came shambling in through the main entrance, the attention of all the men in the cemetery were focused in their direction.

And it was a good thing we were close to the required spot and the Council's men were distracted; when the anomaly bloomed to life right on schedule, it seemed to light up half the cemetery. As soon as I saw it, I grabbed Stefan and Damon each by the hand and raced forward. I knew all the others wanted to get back through the anomaly as much as I did, but one or both of the brothers might balk at the last moment.

"Come on, we have to hurry," I said urging them on and not bothering to whisper. "Once we are through the anomaly, we will be safe."

I could feel both of them begin to hesitate as we approached the weird crystalline structure. Even though I had been through anomalies many times before, it still seemed hard to comprehend that it wasn't solid and that passing through it was possible and would lead to another time and place. But I could start to hear shouts from the men by the Church and we needed to get through the anomaly before someone started shooting.

The others must have sense the same hesitation in the brothers that I did for abruptly, Caroline swept Stefan up in her arms and raced forward. Then Harry grabbed Damon up in a fireman's carry and sprinted after her. Lester and I were left bringing up the rear.

Lester was just in the middle of making some comment about being too old for all this running around when we passed through the anomaly, but his words abruptly froze when we reached the other side.

From what Bonnie had said, I had expected her to open this new anomaly mere seconds after she had closed the one we had arrived through four hours earlier. So I fully expected to step out into broad daylight in the wide glade that had existed 123,000 years earlier where the modern Mystic Falls stood. However while it was once again daylight, we most definitely were NOT in the expected alpine glade.

**End of Chapter 33**

Author's Note:

Well, that's all I have finished for now. Considering how little interest there seems to be for this story, I'm not sure I will ever come back to it or simply move on to other things. I will leave it here for a little while and then move it over to the Vampire Diaries/Primeval crossover category where it more rightly fits.

Have a great day!

Duane


End file.
